Over the last few months (perhaps couple of years in fairness) Pepsi has gradually been taking longer and longer to eat his meals – sometimes he can take 30 minutes or more to complete a task that in his prime would have taken less than 30 or 40 seconds.  More recently (the last month or so) he has actually refused to eat completely on occasion leading us to (obviously – he’s a labrador who competes with his mate to eat) be concerned that there is something wrong.  To the point that Tim bought him a raised dog bowl months ago to see if that would help (it didn’t) and he has ultimately begun to lie down next to his bowl and simple grab a mouthful of biscuits and spit them out over the floor, picking them up [almost] one at a time.  All the time of course, Max hanging around as if to say, “can I help him please?”.

We have wondered if there is a problem with his teeth as he often seems to struggle to bite the biscuits, leading us to pouring boiling water over the biscuits in order to soften them – this STINKS as it releases whatever as the biscuits are broken down.  It hasn’t really helped in fairness although we did note that when putting gravy in with the biscuits that seems to help big time….

So, we decided it was time to get professional assistance and booked him in to the vet – plus they could both get their claws clipped while in there – we have had a few near missed with claw clipping when it comes to taking too much and causing bleeds – then the superglue comes in rather handy….  🙂

So, in we went yesterday, Max was with us so was hyper (he doesn’t get to go often and was so excited to be on a lead and THEN getting in the car.  Even more so when he realised where we got to – was like having a 3 year old again….

After the appointment it was clear that while Pepsi does have decay to his rear right teeth, they are not terrible considering his age and that maybe (as perhaps we thought) he is just getting selective about what he WANTS to eat.  So, we thought to try him on some canned food that would not upset his stomach (given he got the collitus and all).  So we bought 4 cans of food (yes these were just 420g in size (similar to baked bean can) and cost around £3.00 each 🙁

We gave him just 1/3 of a can along with 2/3 his usual biscuit allocation for dinner last night – it was gone in under two minutes – not bad considering his breakfast took about 25 yesterday morning.  Then again this morning although he upped his game and *almost* beat Max to eat his breakfast in around 1 minute and 30 seconds.  His tail was wagging furiously the whole time too….

Oh crap, so we got a choice here – keep his eating happy in his final months / years BUT accept it is going to add 50% to the cost of feeding him (already at £60+ per month) or make him battle on at 30+ minutes per meal….

Then to really nail it, Max has already begun sniffing the air as if to say, OK I can smell that loveliness but I can’t taste it….