Cant Keep Quiet!

For nearly 12 years now, my dog has acted like an air-headed, happy-go-lucky mutt whose only care was who would rub her belly next.  It turns out that Artie has been hiding her brains behind a stupid grin/act for all this time.

A couple of weeks ago, Artie started having problems with incontinence.  It started out just happening in the morning before she woke up and then got to the point where she was dribbling all over the place.  When I took her to the vet it turned out that her urine was way too dilute, especially for a dog that hadn't had anything to drink in over 12 hours.  Urine and blood tests also came back showing that she had way too much protein in her system than was good for her.  Basically, her kidneys aren't working properly.

Since then she's been on medicaton for the dribbling and a special low protein diet ever since.  Well, she's been on medication ever since, the diet she just won't eat.

I'm not a big fan of shoving pills down my dog's mouth.  I'm not afraid of it, I've done it several times and she's never tried to bite me, I just don't like to do it.  So I bought some pill poppers/pockets.  I managed to hide the pills in those for less than a week.  Then she figured out what was going on and would just eat around the pocket and leave them.

That is, when she was eating the food she'd eat around the pill pockets.

I started out giving Artie the dry low-protein food mixed with canned low-protein food.   She'd eat the whole thing up.  That lasted about 3 days.  Then she'd eat the canned food and leave the dry food.  Now she's leaving the canned food as well.

I mixed up a piece of cheese in her food tonight to tempt her.  She brought out a mouthful of food, dropped it on the floor, and pushed it around until she had just the cheese.

She's never been this smart.  We've always been able to get her to eat something she didn't want to eat by mixing it with canned food or some other treat.

Right now, besides the pills I'm shoving down her mouth and a few biscuits, the only thing I'm sure she's eating is grass.

Any suggestions? I'd mix cat food in her bowl but that would defeat the whole "low-protein diet" diet.

If this continues tomorrow I'll have to call the vet and see what he suggests.  I'm not keen on buying a different type of low-protein brand at $30 a pop to see if she eats that.  I still have most of the last bag I had to buy.

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