Leg's Still Broken!

Sorry about not updating the blog much lately! Apart from our days being fairly repetitive, there's also a problem for me sitting in the desk chair by the computer. There's nowhere to put my leg up, and the chair being on wheels quickly makes... I dunno, something(?) ache.
(There, now you can't be mad at me, I pulled the "broken leg"-card!)

She does it to me too! I'm working my tail off here...

One thing I find incredibly annoying with my leg like this (apart from all the other millions of things which annoy me about a broken ankle) is how bound I am to certain pieces of furniture. Stuck in one position. I figured all this boring sitting around-time could be put to good use by making some treats for Monster. So, said and done:

[Monster:] Mmmmmm... *drool*

It takes a while to cook a turkey, and then it's a big, horrible mess with stripping the meat and cutting it into tiny treat bites. Excellent use of my time! Except... I usually sit on the floor to do this - I'm a vegetarian and I just don't want all that grease and, you know, corpsiness, to get on my table or work surfaces. I wavered a little this time, since it's kind of hard for me to sit down on the floor right now. Not to mention painful once I'm down. But my dislike for non-vegetarian protein (sounds so much better than "dead animals", right?) convinced me to do as usual. After an hour on the floor the turkey was stripped and packed away into plastic bags. Then followed The Question.

Mom... How are you going to get back up?

Yeah, that one! Let's just say I'm glad no one had a camera on me for that little exercise. Hands covered in turkey grease, one leg in a cast: how not to limit yourself if you want to get up off the floor.

In other, (slightly) less complainy, news I'm trying to find ways to have fun with Monster which allow me to stay seated. Bonus if it's also a bit of a workout for him. I've tried filming one such exercise, but as usual you'll see I'm not a particularly skilled videographer...

This is Monster basically not using an inflatable elephant as a position box. We normally do this in the living room, but the cheap video camera I have can't handle the low light so I moved us outside. Monster clearly thinks that's a bizarre idea and isn't overly interested in showing off how we usually do this exercise. It also doesn't help that I'm sitting off to the side, and completely (and repeatedly) fail to throw the treats so he can catch them. Obviously the flaw is my distance to the elephant, so Monster very cleverly decides to fix the issue for me...

Today's Cloud

This evening Monster seems to be a bit under the weather... He mostly wants to sleep and occasionally go outside to do his business rather quickly. Poor guy...

I wonder if this thing can be used as a potty...

I gave him some kibble earlier today, and it's been months since ha last had anything other than raw food. I wonder if that's what's bothering him...

Monster Turkey

Yesterday I cooked a 14 pound turkey I'd bought a while back. It's been lying in the freezer looking at me every time I opened it, but I've managed to ignore it for a while. I bought the giant thing for Monster on a whim, when it was on sale, but I've been putting off cooking it... For one thing, it's gross! Seriously, dog food and treats are bad enough, but putting a giant corpse in the oven to steam and stink all over the house is just, well, yeah, gross. When I win the lottery (relax Mom, it's just a figure of speech, I don't gamble!), I'm getting a house with two kitchens. One for human (vegetarian) food, and one for dog food. But until that day, I have to accept that we only have the one oven, so I'm either going to have to share or I can't make special treats for Monster... Sharing it is, then.

That's right!

I grew up on a farm. My parents actually used to raise and sell turkeys once, but by the time I came along they'd moved on to sheep. And in all the years in my mother's house I never tasted turkey. No turkey came into our kitchen, ever. I'm not sure what those birds did to her to piss her off, but I'm thinking it must have been pretty bad... Although, now that I think about it, once we moved on to raising cattle instead of sheep (when I was around 6-7 years old I think), we never ate mutton again. And believe me, we ate a lot before then. Did the sheep piss Mom off too, and that's why one day they were out of the picture...? No idea. Although I do remember a rather vicious ram. Maybe he made a mistake he would soon regret? Anyway, what I'm getting at is I have zero experience in cooking turkey. Did you know it takes a whole day!? Did you know how they smell!? Did you know the damn thing is impossible to turn over inside the oven!?

Do. Not. Care. So worth it!

And do you know how long it takes to take it apart, cut it up into small treat sized pieces, packaging it, and freezing it? I went to bed at two in the morning! Which was when the real fun started... I have a special sheet pan for Monster cooking, and once I've used it he gets to clean it. So as I went to bed I put the (gross) pan down for Monster. I've cooked dog treats on it before, but turkey juice (combined with the long cooking time, I suspect) seems to be a very special kind of mess. I don't know when Monster came to bed, but I woke up around four in the morning and I could still hear him licking that pan downstairs... Which means, this has been Monster all day today:

Zzzznnnnnffffgghhhhhh...

I may have to throw the sheet pan away though. It's still full of turkey remains, and if hours and hours of Monster working on it can't get it out I'm not confident it can be cleaned. Still, very content Monster. I may just buy another turkey in the future...

Today's Cloud

Today I've tried making wonderful treats for Monster. Yummy dried chicken thighs, tasty dried chicken hearts, and wonderful dried whatever-that-pig-part-was... The house smells horrible, and Monster just looks at me and sighs when I hold one of the new treats out to him. Why won't he eat!?

Because he enjoys driving me up the wall, that's why.

Well, there's that. But also, I have my own secret stash in the garden. Ssshhh, don't tell her...

You Are What You Eat. So Is Your Dog.

Here's a good article to start with if you think all dog food is the same! What's in the food?

While I certainly feel that just buying from the top brand isn't necessarily better, I think this article does a good job of sorting out why you should make a deliberate choice rather than just pick up whatever is cheapest, easiest, or your dog is most happy to be served (some kibble is coated in sugar...).

Food for thought, people.

Raw Pleasure

I recently realized a raw food producer was based fairly close to us! I've been trying different dog foods for Monster, among them two different brands of raw food. One he liked OK, but became horribly skinny. The other he liked better, but he's been shedding dandruff and been generally mopey. Neither brand he'd actually finish a full serving of before it went bad (the downside of raw food). So I started looking around for a new brand, and as I said I discovered there was one which is locally produced. It's less than an hour's drive away, and if you buy from the factory you get a sizable discount. Not only that, but if you buy the stuff before it's sliced up and packaged, you get it even cheaper. Raw food is more expensive than most top brand kibble, but the health benefits outweigh the pain in the wallet to me. But this way, even counting gas money, we're getting it cheaper than average priced kibble. I feel there must be a catch somewhere... Let's ask Monster.

Leave me alone, I found a giant meat popsicle!

Nope, Monster doesn't seem to be complaining. Admittedly it's a bit of work to break that thing apart, but two of those bad boys should last us close to a month (depending on how much he winds up eating/needing per day, we haven't landed on a portion size yet).

Ideally I'd like to source and mix Monster's food myself (because you seriously would not believe what gets put in dog food!), but I can't handle it. Apart from feeling I need a science degree to be comfortable balancing a healthy diet for him, I just hate having that raw meat goo all over my kitchen. I've been a vegetarian for... I'm not sure, five or six years now I think. Meat is not something I enjoy handling.

But of all the raw dog foods I've ever handled (and we've tried others that just never made it onto the "let's try this for a while"-list), this is the most pleasant to have defrosting and eaten in the house. It smells exactly like the slaughter house in hunting season when I was growing up [*], and if you don't know what that smells like I can only say it's a lot more pleasant than the smell of those plastic wrapped dead clumps you buy in the supermarket.

[*: That's right. I grew up in the countryside. My family raised animals for meat, first sheep and later cattle. Everyone hunts. I've helped with slaughter and butchering, and I know where meat comes from. The idea that all vegetarians are city weaklings who were never taught the realities of life is a ridiculous security blanket meat eaters snuggle up to, so they can avoid looking at their own choices. Yeah, I said it.

And I don't chose to be a vegetarian because I'm too weak to eat meat. I have no problem killing for survival, either in defense or for food. I'd kill you without a second's remorse if my life was on the line. But I won't kill for pleasure, which is what you're doing when you eat meat. You don't need it, you just want it. And on top of that, most of you could never handle killing an animal for food, you just expect someone else to do it for you so you don't have to think about the nasty bits. Yeah, I judge.]

Having said all that, it'd never occur to me to make the same choice for Monster, or any other pet. Ethics is a responsibility for those who can understand it.