With Xena's diabetes diagnosis came many changes on the home front. The first thing was to discontinue all the treats I had been giving to her. According to her doctor, none of them were diabetic friendly. The doc started to name the treats not to give her, but I had to stop and ask, "What can I give her?" That was a short list with rice cakes being the handiest item on the list.
As you peruse this site, you will understand that in order to ensure Xena not have access to the "bad" treats, Kahlua had to make the snack switch as well. So began the new treat trend of rice cakes. At first, the canines were crazy for this new crunchy disc. By week three, rice cakes were so not the it treat. They became good only for indoor frisbee. (As the one who had to eat the remaining supply, I can't say I blame the puppers!)
I searched for diabetic friendly treats on the web. Although I did find healthier treats, they weren't diabetic friendly. Most were wheat flour based which got us away from white flour, they would contain other ingredients that were going to take the sugar levels up. For anyone who has ever dieted, you know white flour products are your enemy because it converts to sugar as the body processes it. I decided to take matters into my own hands and did another round of research on the internet.
Being a twenty-nine year cancer survivor myself, I have a lot of respect for nutrition, regardless of what I do or do not practice on myself. I hit the internet, expanding on what the docs had told me about diabetic nutrition. (Xena had a general practitioner and four specialists.) The key focus seems to be high fiber, low fat and counting carbs. Avoiding sugar is easy enough for a dog, but there's that sugar conversion factor of white flour. White flour was common in most of the biscuit treats I had been giving her. My goal became to create a treat without flour. An even loftier goal was to create a concoction with ingredients to help Xena's blood sugar levels. To help manage Xena's blood sugar levels, once a month I did a glucose check on her every 2 hrs for 24 hours with a food and activity log.
Countless hours of research later, I had a vast list of ingredients to sift into a final product. It took some nine months to birth the cross-species treat that would become known as DelishOats. Failed attempts drew down my ingredients to oats; a brown rice binder; a few spices studied for their properties in controlling blood sugar levels, such as cinnamon, and other nutrients including wheat germ. All ingredients are human-grade, in addition to most being organic.
The resulting DelishOats turned out to be irresistible to more than the Jest2Dogs crew of Xena and Kahlua. They were happy to give DelishOats a high-four. But they weren't the only ones.... Horses, squirrels, goats, pigs, large parrots and other grain lovers can't get enough. Many a pet owner has confessed to tapping their pet's cookie jar or doing a complete intercept. In our home, Xena kept a close eye on the cookie jar, especially when Grandma came to visit. The photo below shows what Xena was willing to do for her DelishOats!
As part of Xena's melanoma follow up, she would get chest X-rays. This visit while Xena was in the back, getting X-rays, an emergency arrived. A local wildlife weigh station brought in a lioness not feeling well, believed to have swallowed a nail. They sedated her and took her to the back for X-rays. I tried to talk them into letting me Photoshop Xena in the lioness's belly, but no go. With many onlookers, our attempts to properly photograph the lioness were repeatedly thwarted by eager paparazzi. This shot was our best, capturing most of the lioness. Unfortunately, her massive head was obscured but look at the size of those paws! The most important thing is, when it was all over and done, the lioness had not swallowed the nail and did not require surgery!!!
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