Archives February 2026

There have been a number of shifts in my daily routine since Elsa has entered this period of health issues that require attention. In addition to all of the cooking of the food we give her which is done almost exclusively by my girlfriend, feeding her takes more time as well. Instead of just dumping some food in a bowl and calling it good we now put the food on a plate and at least initially will start feeding her pieces of chicken or other food by hand, she actually likes this. Eventually she will start eating the rest off the plate by herself but if we just put a full plate in front of her she looks at us and waits for us to give her some food by hand first. I also act like I am blowing on each piece of food to cool it, it seems to help to identify each morsel as “special”. We need to carefully embed the couple pills she is taking inside of the food to avoid detection which can be tricky as sometimes she can smell them and will not eat that piece of “contaminated” food. The good news is she has been eating very well and has had normal BM’s which has been our short term goal.

The bigger issue is that we stopped giving her the pill that helped control her incontinence, at least for now on vet’s suggestion. That has caused Elsa to “leak” quite often when sleeping. Since she normally sleeps in the bed with me I have been basically running a laundromat, having to wash the bedding daily.

It also incited a rash of buying to come up with a better game plan. I purchased a second mattress protector and bedspread so if there is an accident I can just swap in a fresh set instead of having to rush to get the bedding washed, again. I also bought these large absorbent, washable pads that I used on the bed last night. Two of them pretty much cover the king size bed. The thought is if she leaks on them it’s much easier and faster to throw those in the laundry than all of the bedding. Finally I also bought a 12 pack of dog diapers and tried those Monday night. Elsa allowed us to put them on but when I woke up in the middle of the night to check on her she had managed to get it off although the diaper clearly had absorbed liquid in the process. I may try to get her more used to the diapers.

I will be checking with the vet once we get the next round of blood work done tomorrow to see what her thoughts are on treating the incontinence either by resuming the med she was on or by some other means. If the vet says she should stay off the pill, so be it. I’ll just wear out my washer and dryer if need be.

Elsa has gone through the last two days at home ok albeit with more leaks. I have been monitoring her with a Ring camera. Her energy and emotion seems good. This is the most consistent nutrition she has had in a long time. She has been making 3 BMs a day at this point. Once a day was the old normal. Anyway to accommodate all of the extra steps I now have in Elsa’s daily care my official alarm time has been moved from 6:30 to 6:00 AM, not the end of the world.

Yesterday my new Snapmaker U1 showed up. I did not feel like investing the time to get it set up last night. Instead I logged into WoW and finished leveling another character from 70-80. Right now they make it stupid easy and fast to do so, so I am taking advantage of it.

I’m sure most people have had situations where a loved one has some sort of health issue. Depending on the issue and the loved one, addressing that issue makes most other things in your daily routine seem somewhat trivial and lacking importance. That is how my weekend sort of felt where the focus was on getting Elsa eating, drinking and pooping normally. It seems like at this point, she is.

The vet has given me a total of 5 different bottles of pills. The only ones I have been giving her is one for the diarrhea and another which is an appetite stimulant. The running faucet that was her poop on Friday has stopped and she has had three or four solid BM’s since. She also has been eating regularly albeit due to my girlfriend cooking for her during the weekend, making chicken, rice, veggies and ground turkey among other things. It also isn’t as simple as just throwing down a bowl with food in it. We normally have to feed her some pieces of chicken by hand and then she will keep eating on her own. She also seems to like the freeze dried ultra expensive food I bought for her.

One of the things the vet advised was that we stopped at least for now giving her the med used to help with her incontinence problem, something she has been taking for well over a year. The end result of that is her having an accident in my bed the last two nights requiring me to throw the bedding into the laundry and redo the bed daily. I have an alternative medicine for incontinence coming as well as some washable absorbent pads that I could keep under her in the bed as well as dog diapers, yes dog diapers. One of these options hopefully will handle this issue.

However other than that Elsa has been acting pretty normal. We went for a couple walks and my girlfriends dog hung with her a bunch this weekend which she liked as well. She is scheduled to go back to the vet on Thursday to get her numbers checked again. The blood test on Friday revealed her numbers had climbed some but I am not surprised since they were taken the morning after a night of diarrhea and throwing up twice. I am hopeful if we can keep her eating and drinking normally that her numbers will normalize more. I do think however that she clearly has some degree of kidney dysfunction, it’s just a matter of how well it can be managed.

Like I mentioned I was sort of in an Elsa bubble all weekend. It wasn’t hard to want to stay home with her as it has been bitterly cold by Florida standards. I walked outside this morning to temps in the 30s. I got my base chores done this weekend and dug into leveling more characters in WoW to level 80, the starting point for the new expansion that drops soon. I now have a system in place that allows me to go from 70-80 in roughly an hour, which is kind of nuts. I now have 5 or 6 characters up to 80 and will speed level the rest as I can. It is fun for me as they have simplified the game for me to the point where after a few mouse clicks I can get up and running with a character without having to set up and learn all of my abilities in depth. I am sure purists don’t like this but for me, it’s great.

So the other unknown in Elsa’s condition is how much help I will get from the pet insurance carrier I have. I recently switched in December because the old carrier made some ridiculous changes in their coverage terms. I am hoping the new provider doesn’t require me to fight them tooth and nail for every charge. In the span of a week of care I have racked up some pretty incredible bills already. Sure, I can afford to pay them but I really hope the insurance reimburses me partially to dull the financial pain a bit.