Tuna is the New Chicken Nuggets

Yesterday was my sister S's birthday, and a good time was had by all. Well, as good as we could what with worrying about Mellie. Sweet little Mellie has been going through a bad spell. She has been declining most solid food (beef, chicken, chicken nuggets, even the homemade meatloaf!) for a couple of days now. Yesterday I even had to use the baby-feeding syringe to get her to take her medicine. We crush the pills and mix them in a little melted vanilla ice cream, so she usually takes it willingly, but not yesterday.

We gave her 1/2 a valium last night. Small doses of it act as an appetite stimulant in dogs. This morning she ate her pills-in-ice-cream right down, but still wasn't too enthused about breakfast. I went home at lunchtime, and offered her some beef (no thank you), chicken noodle soup (a little broth, only), and then tuna fish. She drank all of the tuna juice (blech!), and then ate about 1/3 of the tuna! Hooray! Joey the stray cat graciously offered to finish off anything Mellie didn't eat. Wasn't that good of him? Many thanks to Criquette for this suggestion - I would not have thought to give tuna to a dog!

Emma and Tara have been heartily cleaning their plates since I started making meatloaf for them. Who am I kidding, they have ALWAYS cleaned their plates. They eat worms and bird poo and various other unsavory things, so I guess I shouldn't be so excited that they like meat loaf. I'm telling you, since the pet food recall, it feels really good to be getting them off of commercial dog food. I went to a local health food store to get some of the ingredients, and the guy there said they have had quite a few people coming in and either ordering a more "natural" or "organic" brand, or making their own dog food. I'm going to buy a whole bunch of loaf pans so I can make several batches of meatloaf at a time. One batch makes two loaves, and after they have totally switched to meat loaf, the two loaves will last two days if all three dogs are eating it, and three days if it is just Emma and Tara eating it. If anyone wants the recipe, here it is. Enjoy!