Force Feeding
Dunkirk NY – My daughter and her partner are moving back home. The economy has hit them both hard, with the loss of his job and as a consequence the home they purchased and could no longer make payments on. While my daughter has her BA, he has realized he has to get some sort of college education to have a career, and so in order for him to come back to school they are returning here to gain a better economic foothold and get themselves restarted.
In what is clearly a case of unfortunate timing at the cosmic level, their dog is dying. When they arrived to move in the first load of their belongings, they took the dog to the vet because he had become rather listless and lacked energy. The diagnosis was stomach cancer; there was a big tumor in his stomach discovered via ultrasound. He will have to be put down soon. The dog is ten years old, and my daughter’s partner has had him since he was a puppy.
While they are back in MA this Labor Day weekend packing up the rest of their belongings for the return trip back, I am taking care of the dog. He no longer eats on his own, so I am force-feeding him twice a day. The goal is to keep him alive until they return (hopefully tonight) so they can have a few more days with him and then put him down.
Force-feeding consists of taking his food in small chunks, opening his mouth, and shoving it back behind his tongue so that his swallowing reflex moves it down his throat. It is not too difficult a task, because the dog is a super mellow dog and makes no effort to bite. But it is not fun. Given his choice, the dog probably would not eat and eventually starve himself to death. Continue Reading »
