Soup-er Bowl

For the last two months, I’ve made horse soup for Cupcake twice a day. I use this big blue bowl to mix her pelleted feed with water—lots of water.



Something happened to Cupcake in November. The vet said she might have a pituitary tumor or she might have had a stroke. At any rate, she can’t chew well, and her face is a little assymetrical. She tries to eat grass and hay, but leaves little quids of partially chewed stuff around. If she has a tumor, the vet said she’d only get worse. If she had a stroke, she should get somewhat better.

She’s getting better.

For a while, she’d lost a lot of weight. After I figured out that she could drink fine, I started souperizing her pellets. A first it took her nearly an hour to suck up her soup. Now she polishes off her meal in less than a half-hour. And she’s gaining back her weight.

It takes a while for the quart of water to dissolve her pellets, so I have to spend more time preparing her breakfast and dinner. Luckily the big blue bowl works fine.

Is it soup yet?

When it's soupy, I pour it into Cupcake's pan and close her in her stall, so Melody can't take her food.


It takes her a while to eat her soup, but eventually she does. It's worth the extra time and effort to fix her something she likes.

I’m spending more time fixing my own meals, too. After learning how high my blood sugar was, I started low-carbing. Not only will low-carbing bring down my blood sugar, but it’ll bring down my weight, too.

Unfortunately, this means I can’t continue to scarf those convenient microwave meals or make a sandwich. I actually have to cook. Cooking takes time.

But—in the two and a half weeks, I’ve low-carbed, I’ve lowered my average blood glucose level from the 170s--220s to the 150s-160s, and I’ve dropped thirteen pounds. I feel much better, too, except for those times when my BG drops into the 130s—which is still too high for regular people, but it’s low for me now. In a few more weeks, I hope my BG will normally be below that.

Meanwhile, I’m doing super.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, but I have no intention of plopping down in front of the TV tonight and watching some hyped-up football game. I was never encouraged to play football when I was a kid, and thus never became interested in the game. I hear the ads are pretty good, but I figure they’ll be on YouTube tomorrow.

Actually, I don’t watch much TV anyhow, except on Monday nights when my favorite show (The Big Bang Theory) is on. The only one in the family who's into football is Maggie. Here's what she has to say about it.

Football
by Maggie Mae Mushko
(3-year-old border collie)

I have played with my little orange football since I was a pup and am therefore qualified to write about football.


What they do in that Super Bowl thing on TV is not how football should be played.

For one thing, a bunch of men with numbers on their back run all over the place. They should have a border collie to organize them. A border collie would round them up, get them in line (in numerical order, of course), and bring the football to each one in turn. Whoever has the ball would throw it until the border collie is tired. (This could take hours.)


When the border collie gets tired, a second team border collie would be brought in to fetch. Border collies are cuter than guys in helmets, so more people would watch.

And that "bowl" they talk about should be filled with dog treats.

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