The big hurdle in Oz’s recovery has been getting him to eat. The doctors initially warned us about not trying to feed him too much too quickly. In hindsight, that seems laughable that we were concerned about him eating too much. Some days it’s better than others and he goes for it, but usually it’s a few nibbles and he loses interest.
So I decided to pull out the big guns and order green tripe. For those of you that have never heard of it, tripe is one of the later stomachs of animals that chew their cud (in this case, cows). There’s even a website about it: "http://www.greentripe.com/":http://www.greentripe.com/. Green tripe refers to tripe that has not been cleaned of contents. In other words, it’s animal intestines filled with partially digested food. Yummers! It’s supposed to be very good for their digestive system because it has all sorts of enzymes that their bodies can’t produce.
It’s illegal to sell to humans, but you can sell it to dogs. And I had heard stories of people that had fed it to their dogs. Step #1: put a clothespin over your nose. Step #2: give the green tripe to your dog. Step #3: Watch your dog go insane with happiness.
I ordered green tripe from Oma’s Pride ("http://www.omaspride.com/":http://www.omaspride.com/) along with many other disgusting and hard-to-find animal items. I had been holding on to it until Oz was a bit more on the mend, but this morning he was barely eating. He had a few bites of the canned food that the vet gave us. He turned his nose up to everything else I had. So I pulled out the tripe.
Yes, it smells like manure. It was still partially frozen so the smell wasn’t that bad. For half a second, I thought of defrosting it in the microwave, but I think David would have run screaming out of the house if the whole kitchen reeked of microwaved manure. I pulled out the mostly defrosted parts into Oz’s bowl and quickly sealed up the remainder.
When I put it down for Oz, there was a tentative sniff. My lips were still curled into a sneer from the smell. Then he gave it a tentative lick. Then he started eating voraciously. He went through two servings and still asked for a third. It was more than he had eaten in days. He lost his appetite at the beginning of the third helping, so Gogo got the rest. She did the same tentative sniff and then went crazy. They licked the bowl spotless.
It’s pretty clear that I’m going to have to order more for them. I’m hoping that it does indeed have a great effect on his digestive system which has had quite a blow over the past couple of weeks.
