Cutting the Cheese

Charlie gets sick, and I am the culprit

I have made no secret of the fact that I’m a lousy nurse, when it comes to humans. When they are ill, my number one priority is avoiding them. I place food outside the closed doors of the rooms I banish them to, and when they emerge, spray them with Lysol. But when it comes to Charlie the dog, I am Florence Nightingale, Canine Edition.

Charlie has been sick for the past five days. I have cleaned up his vomit piles, re-filled his water bowl, plopped myself down on the rug next to him and peered into his scruffy face. I have carried him to bed with me each night, waking up several times to make sure he’s breathing. I have been worried sick about him being sick.

Yesterday I brought him to the vet. After some blood work and it turns out he has pancreatitis. How would a dog get pancreatitis? you might be wondering, and I’ll tell you: from an extremely high-fat diet. What did I add to Charlie’s every meal because he loved it so much until he started vomiting it up? Cheese. Specifically, cheddar.

The guilt! After four cheeseless days he seems to have turned a corner. On some level I knew it wasn’t normal to feed him cheddar cheese all the time, but no one has ever accused me of being normal, and I’m a hard-wired pleaser. When it came to Charlie’s affinity for cheddar, I was the perfect storm.

This was a wake-up call. The vet made me put him on gastrointestinal biome dog food, and have steeled myself against pleas for table scraps. He looks at me, no doubt wondering where his enabler has gone. The fact is she’s still here and still doesn’t know when to stop, but where cheese had its limits, you can never give too many belly rubs.