My Boys

Update 5 October:

The vet gave me some appetite stimulants for Lupo yesterday and he ate, and enjoyed, his first complete meal since he arrived. Note to self: Wash fingers after handling those tablets if they can do what they did for Lupo in the space of a couple of hours!!

The boys arrived in fairly good form a week ago.

Toffee has settled in to what must seem like heaven - love, food, attention, love, food, attention.

Lupo, my darling, beautiful, amazing boy, however, isn't doing very well. He hasn't eaten a proper meal since arriving, subsisting on some hand-fed food, some treats and not too much more. I'm taking him to the vet on Sunday (am back at work today and yesterday and tomorrow are holidays here so no vet).

He's happy when at the beach and swimming, running or the ever-popular frisbee-catching, good when resting at home (yes, I let him on our bed and sofa), but morose the rest of the time.

Thank goodness he's still drinking lots of water.

Rhona and I differ on our approach to this lost appetite. I favour finding things he WILL eat and if necessary hand-feeding him. She shouts at him when he doesn't eat from his dish and orders him around. She is using this very slow adjustment to his new life to chastise him for not eating and then telling Steve (she wouldn't dare say this to me) that she will take him back with her.

The climate is not what he's used to, I now find out that she's back with the asshole boyfriend who has a dog which is Lupo's buddy, he's in all new surroundings. It will take time for him to settle into his new life without his regular buddy and which cannot include three-hour outings every day - as I explained to her, noone can sustain that and have a job. I had to bite my tongue so as not to say "and have their rent paid for them for almost nine years".

Steve adores him, he adores Steve. They even went for an after-dinner walk/run yesterday which was so good for them both to be together like that. Of course Rhona had to use it against me as being yet more proof I'm not looking after Lupo. I slapped her down with just one sentence - a reminder that only under her care, had the poor dog pooped in his own home, a source of awful embarrassment for one of the cleanest dogs I've ever known. And the reason for that embarrassment? She slept through his crying to be taken out with a sore tummy. No doubt a wine-induced slumber.

Fingers crossed we can sort out his eating. I will sit on the floor and hand-feed him every kind of meat he loves, to get him over this. I hope the vet can help, too. It saddens me more than I can say, to see him like this.