HUNT: Man versus Magic in battle of wills

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Magic and I are in a battle of wills. Wits. IQs perhaps.

So far, it’s kind of a tie.

My five-and-a-half year old Irish wolfhound/terrier mix who has been my constant companion through COVID and into retirement, has developed what has been diagnosed as a nasty yeast infection. It’s a constant itch that was making him uncomfortable, and frankly, driving me nuts too.

A food allergy, the since-departed Dr. Mann at Southpaw Animal Hospital determined. (She didn’t die, she just moved to England). She sent me home with some cream to apply and a big bag of Royal Canin dry, which Magic refused to eat.

Well, I’m a sucker for soulful brown eyes, be they human or canine, as both my daughter and granddaughter would testify.

I buckled first and switched him back to Pedigree … which of course, didn’t solve the problem. We returned a couple of months later, I confessed my crime to Dr. Mann, who understood, and gave us – well, him – a prescription to Apoquel, an anti-itch pill to be taken every day, filled monthly. A hundred and fifty bucks a month.

Gulp. That was me, not him.

He didn’t gulp them at all. I disguised them in cheese, peanut butter, hamburger. Ultimately, we settled on pill pockets, with me breaking the pill in half and smooshing a couple of pill pockets together so he would gulp them down before he knew what hit him.

We finished the second month of that last week and my poor pup seemed as itchy as ever. In the meantime, I was searching online. I tried combing coconut oil through his coat. A couple of pet store concoctions for parasites. I had the couch and chair and the rug steam-cleaned.

Still, Magic was doing his impression of The Simpsons characters Itchy and Scratchy.

So it was back to Southpaw. Dr. MacKellar, too, traced it to a food allergy and sent me home with antibiotics, to be taken every 12 hours; a medicated shampoo and instructions to apply it to his back and belly twice a week for the next two to three weeks; a 2.27-kilogram bag of dry food; a dozen cans of wet; a Nexgard pill for treatment of parasites that might show up and a bill for … well, never mind.

Let the fun begin.

He hates the dry stuff. He hasn’t touched it. He eats the wet stuff reluctantly – and not from his bowl, thank you. I have to mash it up with my potato masher, take it in my hand and let him eat from my hand as we sit on the couch together. I came up with this solution only after he had not eaten at all for two days. I have now officially mashed more dog food than potatoes with that utensil.

The bath was a bit of a disaster too, I’m afraid. Usually, I wait for a nice day, take him out onto the front porch with soap, water, shampoo, wash, rinse, repeat. It’s too cold for that now. He doesn’t do the tub. And he weighs, it says here on his chart, 44.7 kilograms (98.57 pounds). I am 66 years old. The math doesn’t work.

So when I go into the bathroom to do my reading and he follows me in and flops over, I seize the opportunity to lather him up and rinse him off with a bucket of water and a sponge. No complaints so far, except that he’s usually at my feet as I write, and tonight, he is not. He’s curled up in the middle of my bed – where, upon further inspection, I found remnants of the pill he’s supposed to be taking every 12 hours in the bedding.

Yes, administering the pills has been the best game of all. It’s right there on his chart that he can’t eat anything but his assigned food for three months, and this time, I am determined to stick to the script, soulful brown eyes or not. (Stop looking at me like that, Magic!).

That means no incentives of any kind … no cheese, no hamburger, no pill pockets.

That means he knows what’s coming when I approach him, and he clenches his jaws tight. I cannot pry his mouth open – see above, I am 66 years old. So it means I have to jam the pills – it’s one full one and half of another – between a gap in his uppers and lowers, like feeding quarters into a vending machine.

He spits them out. I swear and repeat.

This morning, we went five rounds before I thought I had won.

I found two chunks in the bedding when he went in there to sulk after his bath this evening.

This time I made sure. But I looked into those brown eyes and told him I love him and this is all for his own good.

I think he understands.