Rice and Sunny

Today I cooked rice in a pot, not in the rice cooker, for the first time in literally decades. I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to do it, but I had a strong motivation: Sunny.

Sunny hasn’t been doing well for many weeks now, and it’s pretty much the same as I described it back in July: Sometimes she’s good, other times she’s not. She has inflammatory bowel disease (IBD, and not to be confused with irritable bowel syndrome, IBS). She has trouble absorbing nutrients, and so, needs a lot of fibre (to help slow down her bowels) plus protein for nutrition. Her diet’s also supposed to be low-fat, apart from some “good fats”.

The problem is that because she can’t absorb nutrients well she’s been wasting away: She’s all fur and bones. Basically, she's been in a slow downward spiral for the past several months. So, naturally, I turned to Dr. Google (out of a bit of desperation, really).

The advice from veterinarians was, in addition to the dietary advice I already knew, to feed her several small meals a day, rather than one or two big ones, and to give her dog probiotics, which I’ve been doing for awhile now, and it’s seemed to help a bit. Rice, they said, was particularly good for her. So, I made the rice for her midday small meal.

I haven’t made rice in a pot before because of the ease of a rice cooker, but it means I can make less than the rice cooker does which is important: Cooked rice can’t be kept very long. I knew that Sunny loves rice, but one site said to make it with equal parts water and chicken stock, and I knew she’d especially like that because she likes it when I put chicken stock on her food.

It turned out that she loved it and ate the equivalent of maybe a cup and a half or so. That made me very happy. For dinner I’ll also give her some chicken (for dogs), which I know she also likes.

If this new regimen works, she can put on weight and, eventually, get to a healthier state. If it doesn’t work, it’ll just give her a better quality of life as she continues to decline slowly. I owe it to her to try.

I have no illusions about any of this. She’s 12 and IBD isn’t curable. There really aren’t any drugs, apart from steroids when she had an acute attack, so diet is really the only arrow in the quiver. It may not work at all, or not well enough. But if it does work, she’ll get a longer life. I’m watching closely, but right now, despite everything, she’s bright, focused/present, cheerful (except when her IBD is acute), and loving. As long as that continues, so will my fight for her.

Obviously, this has been extremely hard on me, too. It’s been painful watching her decline and feeling powerless to help, and there have been days I was certain she was on her way out, only to have her bounce back. Other times she’s seemed to be getting healthier, only to suddenly have a bad spell again. It’s been a wild roller coaster for her, and for my emotions.

Despite all that, I keep trying: I give her food she likes, and I feed her by hand when she gets freaked out by her brothers hovering nearby. I make sure a door is open in case she needs to run outside quickly, and at night I leap out of bed if she asks to go out (which she rarely does). And now I’m trying different methods for feeding her because what I’d been doing clearly wasn’t enough. It may not work, but I need to try.

Nigel used to call her his special girl, and they had a real bond. Like me, he wouldn’t want her to suffer—but he also wouldn’t give up on her if there was a chance for her. Nigel and I were completely alike in how we reacted to and treated our furbabies, so I know he’d be completely with me on what I’m doing. Knowing that actually helps.

I can’t possibly know how this will play out, whether she’ll improve or continue declining. She’s already lasted far longer than I expected her to, and that’s encouraging. Come what may, she and I are in this together. She’s my special girl, too, after all—special enough to cook rice for after all those decades.

The photo above is of the rice when I was done, after I fluffed it with a fork (it's a large pot full so I get two meals out of it for her and some for me, too; it was quite nice). It turned out better than it has in years, though, sadly, that was more good luck than good planning (I winged it, mostly). I had a rice cooker in Chicago, then when I came to New Zealand Nigel cooked rice in the microwave, so I did, too. Then we got a rice cooker, and that was that. Until today.