I set a reminder to check out the blood moon that went down this morning between 6 and 7 AM. I did not see it. I am not sure if it was too low on the horizon for me to witness but I walked the entire yard in my boxers trying to spot it in the sky with no luck. Oh well.

Last night I got a chance to work a little bit more on the V12S tire swap, getting to the point of removing the old tire. However the feeling of accomplishment of getting the tire off quickly mutated into self disgust when I held it up to the tire I bought to replace it. As you can see, the new tire on the left is much larger. Evidently in my haste to select the tire I did not pay close enough attention to the sizing. I selected a tire with a 16 inch rim size instead of a 16 inch outer diameter. DOH!

I was frustrated and annoyed with myself although it certainly is not the first time not paying attention to detail has bitten me in the ass. What was more annoying was I could not find the tire model I hoped to use in the size that I needed. I don’t believe Michelin makes it.

After searching for 15 minutes on the internet I came up with another plan. I bought the tire that is on my Veteran Patton, which I love. If I love the tire on my Patton hopefully I will feel similarly with one on my V12S. Unfortunately it will take several days for me to get the different tire so the project will be on pause until then.

I have talked in here several times how much I dislike going to Costco. I like Costco products and business model. They sell good stuff and pay their employees pretty well. What I despise is how crowded the store is where there are rivers of humanity everywhere clogging aisles and making the experience miserable most of the time. I have found a solution.

If you go to sameday.costco.com you are able to easily select what items you need and then have them delivered to your door within a couple hours. The service utilizes Instacart to make this magic happen. I make my selections, checkout and I’m done. Now of course this isn’t for free. Instacart charges a small fee and you tip the delivery person as well. For me this is a great trade as I don’t have to drive close to an hour for the round trip nor deal with the quagmire inside the store. I really love this option which I plan to use frequently in the future, especially since the food that Elsa loves is sold at Costco in big bags which last longer.

Ironically they are building a second Costco in our area which will be literally down the road from me, 5-10 minutes away. Even with the close proximity I still think I will be pushing the checkout now button on my computer a lot more than pushing a cart through those overcrowded aisles in the future. Sure sometimes it’s nice to browse the store, stumbling across something that you didn’t expect to find but that juice is rarely worth the squeeze IMO.

Usually I leave Trump chaos for the end of most posts but I wanted to get it out of the way. We now have entered into an undeclared war with Iran, the country whose nuclear capabilities were supposedly “obliterated” last year. Of course this has been pushed by Israel forever. They have wanted the US to be involved in Iranian military operations for a long time. The hypocrisy of action versus prior words when it comes to this conflict is ridiculous but that is the new status quo. What the administration says versus what they actually do changes daily. Their comfort with circumventing the constitution and general rule of law would be a huge cause for alarm in a normal reality. However time and time again these actions are met with no consequences so the hope for different outcomes fade away, at least for me. Short of divine intervention, all I feel I can do is try to survive until the state of madness is no longer the norm.

I did not play any pickleball this weekend. I have tired of the huge crowds on the weekend which make the wait between games 30 minutes or more at times. Those prolonged cool down periods just do not play well with my IT band problems. I did decide to test myself physically this weekend in another way when I went to the gym Sunday morning.

When I was huge into calisthenics HIT style workouts were a core part of it where you are doing high numbers of reps of different movements with as minimal rest as possible. They are very tough but also very effective as you are working your strength and endurance simultaneously. Somewhere between four and five years ago I was doing a 400 at the gym pretty consistently. The workout consisted of 100 pull ups, push ups, hanging knee raises and body weight dips broken into many micro sets.

The way I did the sets back then was an initial set of 10 reps of each and then sets of 5 each until I got to 90 reps where I would grind out a final set of 10. For reasons unknown to me I wanted to see how I would do with the workout now. I don’t do consistent cardio routines anymore, the closest I get is playing pickleball, which is not enough.

In my mind I thought I could complete the 400 reps in roughly a half hour. I vaguely recall that when I was doing the workout consistently I did it as quickly as 28 minutes and change. Wow was I wrong. I never feel all that strong first thing in the morning but man, it was a struggle right from the get go. By the time I got up to 100 total reps I was already feeling tired, a feeling that only increased with each set. The killer part of this routine is the pull ups.

I still do pull ups in my gym routine but not nearly the volume I used to do. All the sets of 5 exhausted me much faster than they used to and were the biggest reason the workout took as long as it did. For a good portion of the sets I would only be able to get four in a row and then would have to drop off, regrip and get the 5th rep which takes way too much time.

I mentally was on the verge of quitting several times. At first I thought if I made it to 200 reps that would be good enough. When I got to 300 reps I got the idea that I would do the other three movements but not pull ups for the rest of the time. I was so tired. However in the end my stubbornness won out and I completed all 400 reps. My time was 47 minutes, wow.

This was a good wake up call for me and illustrated how I need to add this type of intense endurance work back into the mix of what I do. When it comes to health and fitness the path of least resistance is never the best choice. My upper body was spent all day afterward and I am sure the next couple days the soreness will amplify further.

I’m not sure if the full moon was tweaking my head but yesterday I took on another challenge of a different variety that I had not done in awhile, ripping apart a perfectly functioning wheel to do an upgrade that I don’t really need.

My V12S has been a nice wheel. The one gripe I have had is it feels wobbly after I cross the 25MPH mark. I have a theory that a different tire might address that problem so I bought I Michelin Pilot Street 2 tire for it, a tire I have used successfully on other EUCs. Based on my research I knew changing a tire on this wheel was not exactly easy but I was hoping I could find a streamlined method to do it. Well that method doesnt exist.

After about 90 minutes of disassembly this is the state the wheel is in. I still have a couple more things to remove before I can even access the tire to change it. Then the fun job of putting it all back together will begin. I have no doubt there will be a couple bolts that might be left over at the end. It’s going to be a kick in the head if after I do all of this work the issue is no better which is a distinct possibility. There are no V12S tire swap videos on the internet so if nothing else, I can fill that void of content. I hope to be able to work on this after work this week as time allows.

Elsa had another good weekend, eating well, pooping well and being happy. That’s all I can ask for.

Yesterday I got the second AMS unit installed on my big H2S printer on the right to match the same set up on the smaller P2S. Adding the unit was straightforward and easy. The end result is I now have access to up to eight colors on each printer which gives me a lot of flexibility. I love it.

Yesterday my cleaning lady was scheduled to come. Since I had the day off I had to plan around their visit. I took Elsa with me while I went to the gym and then met my GF for lunch. I wound up sitting in the park for 45 minutes later than I needed to because I did not see the garage activity indicating the crew had left, oh well it was nice outside so it was not bad hanging in the truck.

I got an email from my pet insurance company that they did reevaluate my initial claim based on my vet providing detailed justification for why that visit was initiated by GI distress not kidney disorder. They agreed to “pay” a portion of the massive bill but all they did was apply $800 towards my $1000 annual deductible so I received no actual reimbursement but hey, it’s better than nothing. Regardless I really appreciate the way my vet office has extended themselves on my behalf more than once.

We have had a run of extreme cold by Florida standards the last few days. Of course compared to the blizzard that just hit NYC this is a walk in the park. Elsa does not like being cold as demonstrated by her fuzzy blanket cocoon she was in this morning.

Elsa continues to be holding up ok. Since bringing home the FreshPet food from Costco she has been eating it all, immediately. We no longer have to play these games where we feed her by hand or try to trick her into eating. She just cleans the bowl. If she was not walking around wearing a diaper I would say that she is acting pretty much how she was prior to her week long visits to the vet. She is eating well, pooping well and seems to be normal Elsa. She drinks a lot of water but she has been doing that for quite awhile. Does this mean that everything is fine? I guess the next blood test she gets will tell more of the story.

I gave myself an extended four day weekend by taking Monday and Tuesday off. I wanted it to be of the productive variety so I made a list of things I wanted to get done. I used to rely on lists consistently to get things done at the old house but sort of stopped using them once I moved. The list had 6 items on it, only one item remains crossed off as of this morning.

One of the tasks was cleaning the gutters which routinely fill up with branches and leaves from the nearby oak trees. It only takes me about an hour to clear them but I had bought 100 feet of gutter screen months ago that I had intended to install to cut down on the issue. Once I tried to install a section I shit canned the idea. Trying to get the screening slid far enough under shingles so they sat properly was nearly impossible so I said f it. I can spend an hour three times a year cleaning the gutters, it won’t kill me.

I shot video of two of the list items, replacing a bunch of maintenance items on my Shark robot and a review of my new SnapMaker U1 printer, which I love.

Another list item put my rigging skills to the test. I have always been adept at figuring out ways to come up with solutions/fixes to issues which may not be conventional. I have not had to dust those skills off in a while.

During last weeks yard sale my girlfriend grabbed this elliptical machine ridiculously cheap. Supposedly the only issue was the plastic door that held in the batteries was broken which the prior owner addressed with duct tape, not a huge deal.

Well when I got the machine into the house and tried it the resistance felt stupid high, even with it being set to the lowest level. My girlfriend was ready to walk away from it since it was only $10 but I wanted to see if I could fix it with no prior elliptical machine repair knowledge.

I found the manual online which didnt give any tear down advice but taking it apart was pretty straight forward. At first my “fix” was to disconnect the wheel the pedals were attached to from the heavy flywheel but that gave no resistance at all which was bad, just in another way. As I observed the guts of the machine I saw that it sort of worked like a drum brake. There was a small servo that appeared to control a pad that presses against the flywheel. That pad appeared to be making significant contact.

My theory is the servo that controls that pad was bad however I realized that I could slide it’s connection point manually to retract the pad. Now I just needed to find a way to keep it that way. A small sheet metal screw did the trick, I was able to anchor the slide permanently in the retracted position. Even with the pad retracted the machine gives enough resistance to be challenging so I called it good to go. I even addressed the battery door problem with a small ratchet strap that kept the door in place and the electronics functioning. I mentally patted myself on the back as my girlfriend used the machine yesterday. I can still be McGyver when needed.

During my last trip to Costco I bought a big 6 pound bag of FreshPet dog food. Elsa seems to love it. The healthy chicken recipe doesn’t require me to do any song and dance for her to eat it. She cleans her bowl every time. Is it a renal specific diet, nope. However for now I am just happy she is eating well and as a result feeling well. She has adapted to wearing the diapers and doesn’t seem to care much. It also cuts down dramatically on the amount of laundry I have to do.

I got some unexpected great news on Friday. My vet actually applied for a grant to help for some of Elsa’s bills based on my insurance company denials. They actually got a $1000 grant which will get credited right back to my credit card when they receive it. I was touched that they went ahead and did that for me. It was very kind and appreciated.

The Olympics are done which always makes me a bit sad. I caught a decent amount of the events over the last two weeks. It was nice to see the world community coexisting happily for at least a short while without some old, fat, angry, ignorant man calling somebody a loser while naming whatever monument he can after himself.

Last night’s sleep was the highly interrupted variety. I heard Elsa get up and walk out into the living space which is always a sign of trouble. I took her outside all three times. The first time she threw up a little bit and then squatted like she was pooping. I couldn’t actually see anything although I heard some nasty sounding gas going on. The other two times she got up there was no more puking but more phantom pooping with fireworks. Before the first trip I removed the diaper and just counted on my waterproof bedding cover to do the job if needed, which it did.

I’m not sure what brought on the issues although nausea is a side effect of kidney disease as well. It has not been easy to feed her, even on the appetite stimulant. My girlfriend made her some egg whites to add to her dinner last night which is a clean low phosphorus protein. I wouldn’t think it would have caused any GI distress but who knows, that is the only thing different that she ate yesterday.

As you can imagine having my sleep interrupted three times and the subsequent time it takes for me to fall back asleep left me in just a tick above zombie mode this morning. It’s the new reality, I just have to suck it up and manage things as well as I can.

Yesterday was Elsa’s 11th birthday. My girlfriend, her dog Mia and I had a cute little celebration for Elsa complete with a vanilla cupcake, a candle, balloons, a fresh bone to chew on and even a birthday hat. We gave her a little of the cupcake which she enjoyed and tried to spoil Elsa with love all evening. She ate a decent amount of food for dinner, assisted by the appetite stimulant I now am giving her daily. It was a good night although the reality of her health situation was always just under the surface for me, tempering what would normally be happy feelings.

Earlier in the day Elsa gave me a birthday surprise when I came home at lunch to see she pooped on her one dog bed. She also reaffirmed that she can not be trusted in my office alone. When we walked in there later in the night we saw some chewed up card board and a HDMI cable that had the end gnawed on. It sure seems like she has some sort of dog dementia going on with this nonsensical compulsion to chew on/eat things that she knows she shouldn’t.

Last night the wetness protection I have in place did it’s thing. I did not have to wash any of the underlying bedding. I did once again get up in the middle of the night to let her outside to relieve herself. What sucks is I often struggle to fall back asleep once I get up. I have been walking around in a pretty much constant state of feeling tired.

This morning after a good night with Elsa I had a hard time getting her to eat much of anything. The renal food is a hard no and even the stuff she has been eating consistently she did not show much interest in. This is another symptom of dogs with kidney disease. Unfortunately I do not expect this roller coaster of good days and bad days to go away any time soon.

Saturday morning I participated in our community yard sale with my girlfriend. We went from about 8am until noon although it only took me about 15 minutes to remember why my last yard sale was well over 10 years ago, they suck. You invest all of the time collecting, organizing and putting out stuff that results in you generating a few pennies on the dollar. I think our grand total was a little over $50, big whoop. I will now return to my strategy of giving away, donating or throwing out anything that has outlived it’s usefulness for me.

On Saturday I also purchased a new carpet cleaner. My old unit sounded like it had a bearing that was ready to blow up and it did a shitty job. The carpet in the bedrooms had a series of crop circles on them from running my SpotBot to pick up various Elsa accidents. The new cleaner worked well, well enough that the circles have more or less faded after cleaning.

The rest of my Valentines Day was spent home with my girlfriend. Neither of us felt like fighting crowds for a fancy dinner. Instead we cooked in and had a really nice meal. It was a chill but enjoyable way to celebrate.

I had another excrement nightmare this weekend however. Yesterday my girlfriends dog pooped in the house and my Shark vacuum robot ran over it, spreading it around the living area. The only saving grace is everything was on hard surfaces. I had the same happen in the bedroom once and that was horrid.

Sunday I got out for my first ride on a wheel in over a month. I just have a had a hard time finding the time and motivation to ride, especially since Elsa has become sick. It did feel good to get out there however. I have a lengthy recap of the entire Elsa situation in the video. I also noted how I don’t like the tire on the V12S. I ordered a new tire for it. I don’t know of anyone else that has tried replacing a tire on this wheel yet so it will be a good opportunity for content.

I also accomplished my silly goal of getting all 12 or 13 of my WoW characters to level 80. By the end of it I had fine tuned my methods so much that I was doing it in about an hour per class, pretty crazy.

So on Friday night Elsa basically emptied her bladder on the bed while she slept. She woke up soaked in urine which is no good. After cleaning her up I started putting diapers on her which she surprisingly is pretty good about. The issue is they will not stay on throughout an entire night of her tossing and turning. I had the diaper on her last night as well as the full bedspread waterproof cover. I even got up at 3:30 in the morning to let her pee. Somehow, when I pulled back the bedspread at 6AM there was still a small spot of urine that was on the sheets requiring me to initiate yet another full bedding swap. Yes, it’s frustrating as you can imagine and my sleep is pretty lousy as I am on a hair trigger if I detect her moving during the night.

She also is still not willing to eat hardly any of the kidney friendly food. She will eat the other high quality food I have but it does not have the low protein and phosphorus content she is supposed to be getting. My only win is she appears to like the special kidney friendly treats I bought for her. I expect be having more conversations with my vet this week.

Today is Elsa’s 11th birthday. It seems crazy to me that she is now 11 after adopting her at a young age of 9 months. The idea that a decade has already flown by since she became an instant source of happiness and love in my household is hard to comprehend.

It’s difficult to feel celebratory when she is dealing with the issues that have presented themselves in the last month. The reality that I don’t know how many more of her birthdays will be celebrated is very sobering and sad.

Yesterday I picked up a bottle of appetite stimulant for Elsa. The charge was around $70 which seemed steep, especially when the bottle only contained 7 pills. When I got home I looked up the med online and almost fell over when I saw on Chewy.com that I could get the same medicine in a 90 pill bottle for $13.50. Wow, I was annoyed. I ordered the bottle from Chewy but it still required a vet prescription so I reached out to my vet asking for them to approve it as well as letting them know the insane mark up on the pills they gave me.

They approved the prescription and then told me there was an error. The bottle they gave me was supposed to be $7, not $70. A big improvement but still massively more than what I will be paying. It made me wonder how many more mistakes I would find if I go line item by line item. They did go back in and credit my bill for the two bottles of the stimulant they sold me.

Despite the massive pill overcharging I still overall really like my vet. They called me yesterday to tell me how they did actually reach out to my pet insurance company. They were surprised that the company has no medical professional available to speak to them about the details of the case. She said most should. They pushed the phone rep pretty hard and were frustrated that they were not allowed to speak to the claim adjuster directly, only via email. They wound up submitting their own appeal on my behalf as they are 100% convinced that the initial visit which was from her ingesting a sock should absolutely be covered. I really appreciate them advocating on my behalf which is why I can’t be too upset about the pill pricing issue.

I gave Elsa the appetite stimulant and had almost instant results when we fed her dinner a couple hours later. She cleaned her plate of everything that was on it, including the new renal friendly food. She also has been liking the kidney friendly treats I have been giving her as well. My girlfriend’s dog came over last night and you would never know Elsa was sick. They were running around and playing, Elsa seemed very happy which warmed my heart. I had not seen her that way in awhile.

I received my new full king size waterproof bed cover yesterday. It gives complete edge to edge coverage so there is no way for a middle seam leak to happen like what occurred Wednesday night. It seemed to do it’s job. This morning the main bedding was dry. I simply threw the protector and a fuzzy blanket in the wash which was very light lifting compared to what I had been doing. Elsa once again ate her entire breakfast without issue.

The one negative which is something that has gotten progressively worse over the last year or so is Elsa’s obsession with chewing/ingesting non-food objects. I have gone around the house trying to Elsa proof the place. She is only allowed certain toys and I have relocated most anything down low that could be a chew target. Well last night she exposed two things I missed. I first caught her in my office with the box I have my EUC Army stickers in. I had it tucked back behind a couple things by the wall but on the floor. She pulled the box out and was about to have it for a snack. Thankfully I caught her before she made much headway. That box now is in my closet.

Before I went to bed I found she was also busy in my bedroom closet. She found another box that was tucked in a corner and pulled it out. Again she didn’t actually tear it apart or ingest anything but she definitely had intent. We also had to take a way a toy from her last night as she managed to rip it open. I’m not sure why she is so interested in destroying/eating things she shouldn’t at her age but we now are on constant alert to make sure it doesn’t happen again under our watch since her eating a sock opened up this Pandora’s box.

Last night I got the last character on my main WoW account to level 80, the maximum for the expansion that is current. Of course when the new expansion releases in a few weeks this will be the starting point. I never thought I would be able to get so many characters caught up in this amount of time but it’s been fun to do so. I do still have three characters to level on my SECOND WoW account. Yes I have had two for quite awhile. Back when I was very into WoW having a second account used to give me the ability to power level in certain situations. It also was used briefly by Cindy when she was playing the game with me early in the relationship. I have continued to keep this account active for no good reason other than it has the last two classes, mage and shaman, that I do not have on my main account. I expect to have them all to 80 by the end of the extended 3 day weekend, not that you care.

This extended Valentines Day weekend will include my participation in our community yard sale. I have not done a yard sale for many years. When I did put one on it was at the old house where I always had a big pile of things I needed to get rid of. After the last yard sale I changed to just giving stuff away, not caring about the money I could be getting for things.

Once I moved I had already pretty much thrown out or given away anything that was not needed. Since moving in I have continued with that less is more mindset so I really do not have anything significant to sell at a yard sale. Luckily my girlfriend does have a number of things she can try to sell so hopefully we can make a nice dent in that tomorrow.

Otherwise I’m hoping for a good three days this weekend which includes an abundance of Elsa being happy and enjoying life.

As I have described I have been enlisting multiple layers of Elsa incontinence protection at the house. Part of that is putting two large absorbent but waterproof pads on top of the bedspread at night with the thought being I just can throw them in the laundry each morning without collateral damage. Well I woke up this morning with a massive wet spot in the middle of the bed. I think she somehow got positioned right where the pads overlap and managed to bypass them. The end result was a 6:15 AM stripping of the bed and beginning yet another massive laundry cycle while I swapped in my secondary bedding. I have been doing so much laundry that I exhausted my detergent in about a quarter of the time I normally would. I hope my 10 year old washer and dryer hold up to the extended duty cycles.

It isn’t just bedding that is getting washed. I also have to wash another pad that I use on the sofa where she lays on a regular basis as well as her dog beds. It’s a lot.

So I made yet another purchase in my war against incontinence, two more bed covers but these are king size so there will be no seam that can be exploited. I am hoping this will at least simplify my morning routine if I can just throw this one item into the laundry in the morning instead of a complete bedding set.

Elsa has not been very willing to eat the new kidney friendly food which does not surprise me. Last night my girlfriend had some luck getting her to eat some of it but this morning she refused and would only eat the FreshPet and Nutracomplete food which are both very high quality but not designed for dogs with kidney problems.

I sent my email to my vet yesterday updating her on Elsa’s condition but also letting her know I was not all that happy with what the insurance adjuster told me regarding what they saw in the medical notes. In a nutshell the incontinence med Elsa was on seemed to be connected to both her hyper tension and elevated kidney numbers. I said that from what I saw it seemed like as soon as we saw any elevation in these numbers that medicine should have been discontinued, which we started giving her in 2024. I was nice about it as I do like my vet but I think this was an oversight that contributed to the situation Elsa is in now. I also shared how my pet insurance company has rejected all of my claims, utilizing her medical notes as a reason. I wasn’t sure how she would respond.

She did respond with a very long email that was really nice. She even admitted that in retrospect she should have stopped that med earlier than we did but she thought the high blood pressure readings she was seeing were more from Elsa being very nervous at the vet more than anything else. She also was very upset that the insurance company was using her very detailed and complete notes as a tool to reject payment. She made it clear that she sees this sort of behavior from pet insurance companies on a routine basis and as a result dislikes them greatly. She even offered to advocate on my behalf to my company. I told her she was welcome to but I didn’t expect any significant change of heart from them.

I requested to get a refill on the appetite stimulant as it doesn’t have any significant side effects that would make Elsa’s condition worse. The vet said that was fine. My hope is the stimulant will help get us over the hump with the new food. When she was on this for 5-6 days she was cleaning the plate of pretty much whatever we gave her.

So yea, my focus has been mostly on Elsa’s health and coming up with solutions to her incontinence that I may just have to deal with long term. It’s not convenient or fun, but it’s doable.

So after supplying some additional information from the vet for my pet insurance claim I received a 100% denial of payment on everything submitted due to pre-existing conditions. Towards the end of last year I switched pet insurance companies because my old carrier had greatly reduced benefits while increasing costs, something I believe insurance companies intentionally do to get higher risk subjects off their books. Elsa is at the age when medical issues become more commonplace.

So I signed on with a new carrier that I heard good things about however when I did so I gave no thought to how that would open me up to potential issues with pre-existing conditions not being covered. When I signed on part of the requirement was to submit a health history which was provided by my vet. In that history there was documentation regarding how some of her kidney numbers were elevated but not to a dangerous level. That was all that is necessary for the insurance company to blanket deny everything associated with the claims which total several thousand dollars at this point.

I called in and talked to a customer service rep making the point that Elsa had never had any sort of treatment or suggestion of treatment for kidney issues prior to the weekend where she threw up repeatedly after eating a sock. She suggested I submit a written appeal to the claim adjusters, which I did. Last night I received a very detailed explanation of everything they saw in the vets medical notes, some of which I had not seen nor was aware of. It’s very clear that they will not be paying out any medical expenses related to this issue, great.

I feel like it’s partly my fault for not thinking the conversations I had with the vet last year about her elevated values would escalate into something this serious. If I did I would have been better off staying with the old insurance company so I would at least be eligible for partial reimbursement. Instead I am left holding the tab for everything. This is the exact scenario I have carried health insurance on her for and now it was basically wasted.

As another part of her treatment I ordered expensive special dog food that is low in protein and phosphorus, something that is designed to be easier on the kidneys. I gave her some in addition to the grilled chicken we make for her last night. She ate some of it but was not crazy about it. This morning I tried using it as a condiment on the FreshPet roll I cut up and warmed for her. She mostly turned up her nose at it. You can imagine the frustration I am experiencing on multiple levels.

I am going to contact the vet today and ask if the appetite stimulant is ok to give her long term. Since we stopped giving her that she has been definitely consuming less calories and become more difficult to get to eat anything other than chicken, treats or the Fresh Pet but all of these have to be fed to her by hand one piece at a time. I am also going to ask the vet about some of the information the insurance adjuster provided me as it raises questions for me about some of the decisions that have been made regarding her care along the way.