Our Peruvian Viringos - neurodegenerative disease

Training Zara to eat better is working well! She eats most her meals now, and is expecting to play with the lure after finishing her food. Tonight instead of her normal parading the lure around after catching it she brought it with her onto the bed. It really is the highest value reward for her.

Training Zara to be a better eater has been going very well! She's eating everything I give her 2x a day, I'm starting to increase the amount of food she's getting per meal. My goal is to try to get her to gain some weight back since she's very skinny right now. But she's getting distracted a lot less and she's eating the royal canin. I still have to mix it with other food right now but she's not spitting it out when she tastes it anymore.

Zara had been eating a bit more consistently and I don't need to hand feed her for her to eat, so I think this change in how we do meal times is helping. She ate a lot yesterday and she ate breakfast today.  I'm only rewarding her with lure time when she finishes a whole bowl, but I'll also offer her seconds if she seems like she wants it.

Woo!! Progress! Zara ate a tiny bit last night but she ate 2 small bowls worth this morning.  So she got to play with her lure twice. in other news I need to figure out how to replace the squeaker in this lure toy or find a replacement toy. The squeaker is broken.

She finally gave in and ate and finished all the food I gave her! I made sure to give her some playtime with her lure afterwards since it is the highest value thing I can give her (we don't play with it frequently so she gets really excited for it).  next is to just feed her small amounts and reward her every time she finishes her food until she gets better at eating. 

Well, my attempt to just wait Zara out instead of trying different foods is going about as expected. She hasn't eaten anything, despite being offered food, since Wednesday night. I'm not really expecting her to eat until tomorrow at the earliest.

So still no major signs of the bladder infection coming back, her urine cleared up again. She's being a huge pain when it comes to food though, any little sound makes it so she stops eating entirely. Zara also won't eat any of the several different types of dog food or toppings even after giving her entice. At this point I think I just need to try to wait her out and keep offering food at meal times then taking it away when she doesn't eat it and trying again at the next meal time until she eats. Then reward her after she eats. The rewarding part is challenging since food is not high value for her, mostly just tennis balls are so I will try rewarding her with play time or maybe bring out her lure (it's not usually out for her to play with) after she eats. I'll update with results/progress as I attempt to turn Zara from a terrible eater to a good eater. Here's some pictures from our most recent hike, 4.76 miles! 

A lot has happened since the last update, I'll try not to make this too long though. I'll start with the less great news: Zara still is having the intermittent bladder infections/bacteria that results in blood in her urine (think very very red). We had to deal with that for about 3 months where she'd be fine while on antibiotics but then a week after antibiotics it'd be back with a vengeance.  It finally cleared up after the vet switched from clavamox to a different antibiotic and then had her on it for 2 weeks.  I'm currently concerned that it's gonna start up again. I'm not liking the color of her urine today, but sometimes it just clears up on its own. She is on cranadin (cranberry supplements) and visbiome (probiotics) to try to prevent it. And she's still on the royal cainin food (which is very expensive). Zara is the most stubborn dog ever. She is also getting more and more picky when it comes to food and absolutely refuses to eat her vet prescribe...