Cicadas, Domino, and You

I don’t know if there’s a longer version of this song, this is the only one I can find, but it crawls into my head, heh, and won’t leave whenever I hear about the cicada double brood event happening in the US this summer. I guess two different cycles of cicadas are converging, and a trillion bugs are coming up from under ground…and…getting really busy for about a month. I don’t think it’s going to happen up here, but who knows?

Anyway, I saw an article posted by Guide Dogs for the Blind about what happens if your dog eats a cicada or three. The main message is they’re not toxic, but they may cause some unrest as they make their journey through digestion.

This made me immediately go, “Oh no!” and look up whether the cicadas were expected in my area. This is because Domino has had a turbulent first year with me in terms of belly troubles. Where Tansy has gotten sick once a year, Domino went through a phase where he got sick once a month! I think we’ve figured him out, but we have heard way too much of the hurka gurka clock, although in Dom’s case, it sounds more like the hourawwwmf hourawwwmf clock. I don’t think electronics or the written word can do it justice. It’s a sound that once you’ve heard it, you can’t forget it and you know exactly what it means. It means doom! Doom and carpet cleaning and worrying about what he scarfed up this time that does not agree.

Part of the problem was I think maybe I was feeding him a little less than I should have been, and the poor thing was hungry. He never tried to counter surf and he never scavenged while guiding, but whenever we were outside and he was relieving, he would try and eat anything and everything around him. At first, he just picked things up and carried them. One day, I came back up from taking him out, and found a section of an orange on our floor. Puzzled, I asked Steve why there was a section of an orange on the floor, and he said “There shouldn’t be one.” I showed it to him, and we concluded that Dom picked it up from outside and carried it all the way home. He has grabbed napkins, papers, mulch, whatever he can get his mouth on, he has grabbed it. I was told that was the golden retriever showing, but then he started eating the things he picked up. And sometimes I wouldn’t even feel him doing anything until it was too late. He’s such a long dog, and he glides and floats. He’s very stealthy about his snacking. Then, hours later, we would hear that dreaded sound.

I started feeding him a little more, and things calmed down, but it really improved once I started adding a spoonful of pure canned cooked pumpkin to his food every day. I knew about this little secret from the Trixie days, but in her case, we had used it to solve constipation. But I guess it’s kind of like Metamucil, but for dogs. If they’re constipated, it loosens them up, but if they’re too loose, it firms things up. And Dom was all about the awful poops.

We’ve been feeding him pumpkin for about a month, and it’s been doing him a lot of good. For one, the output is not nearly so disgusting! Second, when he goes out to pee, he takes care of business quickly, which means he’s not snacking up random goodies off the ground, which is probably making his gut happier in the long run. Third, I had been talking about how his eyes were constantly goopy and I was always removing crusties from his face. After a few days of pumpkin, I started commenting that I would check his eyes for goopies and not find any, and this has continued! So does pumpkin have an allergy-soothing effect? Or is he just doing less shnarfing and shcarfing of things that he’s allergic to? I thought he was allergic to chicken, and I still think he might be, but he might be allergic to those pesky incidental snacks which are less of a thing.

And the most amazing thing I have seen since we have started the pumpkin is he’s been able to think more when he’s guiding and solve problems. Sometimes we have had struggles where I am not sure what he’s thinking. I think the poor guy wasn’t feeling tip top, so couldn’t always do his best work.

So yeah, much love to canned cooked pure pumpkin. Just don’t get pie filling. There’s way too much unnecessary garbage in there. Straight pumpkin is the way to go, and he inhales it! Hell, he leaps at his dish as we’re bringing it back from the kitchen. He can’t get enough!