Mitzi's Birthday Dinner

Mitzi is not an easy dog to feed.  Her chronic renal failure often leaves her nauseous and causes her to refuse food for days at a time.  And, as she has other issues with her digestive tract, finding suitable foods to tempt her before an empty gut causes her to vomit bile or pass blood from one end or the other, can be a challenge.  So for the most part I cater to her whims, simply to get food into her belly.  I use a mix of whatever moist dog food she currently finds palatable (it usually changes about every three months, or whenever I try to sneak some medicine into it - whichever comes first), supplemented with home prepared meals or toppers of whatever people foods will entice her to eat.  It's not a very long list - eggs, shredded cheese, occasionally fish, occasionally meat, and occasionally some vegetables.  Forget pumpkin, yogurt, peanut butter, cottage cheese,  rice, potato, sweet potato, or any of those others things that dogs are supposed to like - Mitzi doesn't.

Knowing that eggs are one of the few things that Mitzi will fairly reliably eat when her appetite is waning, a friend with a few back yard ducks gave her some duck eggs for her birthday.

Duck eggs in their natural habitat

Of course, Ms. Mitzi insisted on duck eggs for her birthday dinner that night.  She likes her eggs either scrambled or hard boiled - thank goodness she didn't insist on Eggs Benedict, which would be beyond my culinary skills! So I quickly scrambled two of the rich, creamy eggs and placed them before her:

Two duck eggs, ready to scramble.
The shells will be dried, ground, and added to her dog food later.

FOR ME?

Apparently, duck eggs are a zillion times more tasty than her usual chicken eggs, even though her chicken eggs are also from happy, healthy stress-free chickens running around a local man's yard eating lots of fresh greens.  I have never seen Mitzi inhale a plate of anything as fast as she inhaled those scrambled eggs.

Nom nom nom nom nom....

Dat's the best thing I ever ate! 

And then the little nine pound Princess looked at me and said

MORE, PLEASE! 

Well, I knew duck eggs were richer than chicken eggs, and I knew two eggs - chicken or duck - was a lot of egg for one dog (she usually only gets one scrambled egg, once or twice a week), so I said

NO!  

**Gasp**

Saying no to a Princess is bad enough, but saying no to a Princess on her birthday is simply not to be tolerated.

So she whined and cajoled and whined some more.  I offered her some dogfood, with a little grated cheese:

What the h*ll?

YUCK!
That's not duck egg! 

She left the dog food, wandered out of the room, whined some more, came back into the kitchen, looked at the counter, looked at the fridge (she's no dummy - she knew I'd put the rest of the duck eggs in there!), looked at me, whined some more.......and that continued for over an hour.  Back and forth to the kitchen, whining, staring at the counter, staring at the fridge, staring at me......

I know there are more eggs.
Right there.  In the Big White Box.

Pleeaassse, Mama Jean?
It's mah birthday.  Just one more?

Finally she reluctantly ate her dog food and went to bed.

I''m glad I didn't cave to her incessant demands.  The richness of the duck eggs had her - and me - up four times that night.  She's fine, though well cleaned out, but next time she is only getting one egg. Or maybe even just half.  Even if she does think duck eggs are the best food in the whole wide world.

Ah need to get on Canine MasterChef Canada
so I can learn to cook mah own eggs.
But first I need to learn how to open that fridge.

Being a Princess is such hard work!