We stayed over with my mom last weekend and as much as she dislikes animals she seems to like Basil. He's so darn cute, right?! Well she gave him a piece of grapefruit and rice when I specifically told her not to feed him anything but what I brought. I was furious. FURIOUS I tell you! He can't have citrus fruit I told her! And he's (possibly) allergic to rice. He's fine but he gased us all night.
A repair man came by and gave Basil one of those fake bacon strips. In the commercial on tv, the dog is crazy over this bacon and keeps repeating in a frenzy Bacon bacon!! BACON!!! Dogs shouldn't be that way with their food. Again, I wasn't there for it. I was soooooo frustrated! Of all the things to give him! I'd rather he eat table food! At least I know the table food is some kind of meat or something.
How do you get people to understand they can't feed your dog!?? I think I'm going to start telling people he's ferocious so don't give him food.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
That's very frustrating!!
ReplyDeleteI had a coworker give Clyde a sour cream & onion potato chip, family give him Thanksgiving food right from the table, and my neighbors allow Clyde to waltz right into their house and head straight for the dog food bowl (at least their dog is grain free too...but still).
My family even tried to argue with me saying that corn niblets were "perfectly fine because they're a vegetable NOT a grain..." Well of course corn is commonly known as a vegetable but do you really want to argue this one with me?!?
My grandmother and her boyfriend were the ones we were most worried about - they feed EVERYTHING to our Boston Terriers cousins and my little brother weener dog. Gramma will even cook them their own breakfast of eggs, bacon, etc. Not horribly bad but a dog doesn't need 4 strips of bacon and his eggs loaded up with salt and pepper! Haha.
So I've explained to all of my coworkers and family exactly what happens/can happen if Clyde is fed any food with grains or turkey or chicken: a terrible case of the itchies, his fur falls out and he may or may not have exploding poo in their office or on their living room rugs.
That's all it took. They took me seriously when I mentioned the fur falling out and they especially didn't want to deal with any exploding poo!
Now they always ask "Can Clyde have this?" "Can Clyde have this?" "Can Clyde have this?" "Can Clyde have this?" And 99.9% of the time I just say no thank you.
So far he has managed to score a few pieces of fresh spinach and a prime rib bone from one coworker, after my approval.
And the one time we left him with gramma and her boyfriend, we portioned each of his meals into separate zip lock bags and treats in another. We labeled each bag breakfast/dinner/Saturday/Sunday (even though it was the same thing and same amount in each haha) and said how many treats he could have each day.
And to make it a little easy on them, we did grant them permission to feed him low-fat peanut butter and baby carrots - that satisfied their need to spoil him with people food.
Our threat of course was that if gramma and her boyfriend ignored our rules, he would NEVER be allowed to stay with them again. ;)
So in a nutshell, I think it helps to explain what the side effects are. And maybe even exaggerate a little.
Letitia :)
Letitia,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reply. You're so right! I told my my mom in law the effects, the huge vet bill, and exaggerated a little on the exploding poo and that took care of it. The kids don't understand though since they tend to feed the other family dogs under the table. I just keep an eye on the little ones who like to toss pieces of sugar cookie at the dogs.
With the neighbors, after our episode last month with taking basil to the ER (I didn't get a chance to blog about this yet) after he ate 4 cups of IAMS dog food from the neighbors, they've all been really careful with letting Basil into their houses. I'm so grateful that they are understanding and take their dog food bowl up and don't give him any table food.
I feel so much like my mother was undermining me and she knows nothing about dogs. It was sooo frustrating. Often I carry treats in my pocket and if a stranger stops to give him a milk bone, I gently say He's allergic to that and give him one of my treats to let the person feed him.