Busy Busy

March was a crazy busy month. Koira went in for a dental cleaning and ended up getting her two bottom canines removed due to wear and fractures. They weren't causing her problems yet, but were almost certainly going to soon. Also found out her heart murmur was upgraded from a 1 to a 3. Not good with anesthesia, but the cleaning needed to happen, and better sooner than later.

She started coughing the next day, which led us back to the vet for another x-ray (we did two before surgery to make sure her heart wasn't enlarged) to make sure fluid wasn't building in her lungs. Luckily, the cough appeared to be tracheal irritation from the surgery, not something more serious.

But then she just wasn't recovering. She seemed like her mouth was, if anything, getting more sore. Back to the vet, and we left with instructions for eating only super watery, mushy food, and getting the extraction sites rinsed out after each meal. She did not approve.

And she didn't improve either. After rinsing blood out and observing something white that just would not rinse out of her mouth, back in we went for another follow up. Vet wasn't happy with how things looked, but Koira's mouth involves lips that basically flop in over her teeth, and with how sore she was, she just didn't want to cooperate very much. The vet was able to get a look and do some flushing, and got the white piece out. It was a piece of gum tissue that had died. Gross. The sutures had come open.

So, I was given two options. Keep flushing and hope it got better. Or put my ten year old dog with a grade three heart murmur under anesthesia for the second time in two weeks and hope that there was something they could do to fix things, knowing that there might be nothing they could do any different than the original closure once they got in there. I made the call to go with surgery, which was horrible and the hardest call ever, and then I sat in my car in the parking lot, too shaken up and worried to be safe driving to work, let alone functional at work.

In the end, surgery was the right call. The original extraction had missed a piece of the root of the canine, and it was causing a lot of the irritation. They were able to clean up both extraction sites, flush everything out, put in tiny biosponges, and re-suture her gums back together. She did good under anesthetic.

That was a week ago. She is doing great. Much less painful since the second surgery, though still sensitive. She has been eating three cans of food a day for something like three weeks now, which exhausted my backstock of canned food pretty quickly. We'll be using canned food for at least another week before switching to soaked kibble. Probably over cautious, but I don't think me or Koira can take another trip to the vet at this point (other than a final follow up at the end of this week, at least).

All this to say, I've had a lot on my mind, and a lot on my plate. I totally forgot to do any kind of reviews for Chewy.com like we were supposed to in March. I'm not always the most on-the-ball person, but not normally this spacey about things.

So I'm trying to play a bit of catch up. Koira stayed with my mom over the weekend (with a flat of canned food) while I went to Canada for a flyball tournament.

While at the tournament, I did some trying of the Honest Kitchen cups. I actually tried them for Koira as well when she first came home from the first dental, but they didn't work great. They were too full of chunks, which got stuck in her extraction sites, and she wasn't all that excited about the food. So I decided to use it for the trip instead.

Honestly, it was not the best choice I've ever made. I fed it to two dogs, one of whom was racing for the weekend, neither of whom had eaten Honest Kitchen before. Both of them ended up needing to poop roughly ten thousand times the next day, all of it green and chunky, looking exactly like the Honest Kitchen did going in. Needless to say, I didn't repeat that the following day. Actually, I went to the store and got canned pumpkin instead, to try to fix what the HK caused, luckily with good success and only a tiny fraction of the number of poops.

I should admit that I am probably not in a super positive and upbeat mood as I am reviewing this food, due to Koira's dental issues. My honest reaction to these travel cups was that the cup took up a lot more space in the bag than just a ziplock baggie of the food would have, though it would probably be really nice while traveling and in a hurry, assuming your dog eats exactly the amount in each prepackaged cup. None of the three dogs who tried it seemed super excited about it. The smell actually kind of grossed me out a bit, it smelled kind of like a blended salad with lots of kale once water was added. It didn't work as a smooth/soft food for Koira, because the chunks never really re-hydrated, so it was just chunks and green water.

Like I said, I'm really probably not in the best head space about this product in general, and was somewhat underwhelmed. BUT- I should also say that I don't feed Honest Kitchen on a regular basis and got this product more to just try it out. I think the cups are good in theory (if you don't mind the extra garbage they create), but unless your dog happens to eat that exact amount per meal, the regular Honest Kitchen boxes are probably reasonable enough unless traveling or specifically needing a small amount for some reason. They were easy to use, just open, add water, let sit, and then feed. No measuring needed, and you could feed right in the same cup if you wanted, no bowl required, which could be really nice while traveling.

Here's to no more surgery, and only one more vet visit for the foreseeable future.


We did receive this product for free in exchange for our honest review. Pretty sure it is obvious we were completely honest about our experience with this product. We were not compensated in any other way.