Diet

January 21, 2011

What would you do with 51 cans of Del Monte French Style No Salt Added green beans?

We feed them to Uma.

You can see Uma under Walter's right arm in this (pre-Teddy) family photo:

From WELCOME TO ERIN'S HOME

Don't you think it's a shame for a dog to have so many chins? (I'm going to add a video here if I can find it that demonstrate her true proportions, so you may want to check back later.)

Walter's friend Bob Calvert's widow gave us Uma (aptly? named for Uma Thurman) after Bob died a decade ago.  Uma has always been a model of anxiety and insecurity and for as long as she has lived with us has eaten as a way to calm her inner demons.  Her palate warms to savory and unsavory items dropped on the kitchen floor, bird seed spilled out from the feeder, and anything rotten discovered on her long side trips to the compost pile.  We got to the end of the rope with her over Thanksgiving when she dug up the daffodil bulbs we had just planted, on the theory that they were tasty, rather than toxic, morsels (see line 1 of this handy chart).


Since then, we have added a can of green beans to her daily diet.  Each can adds a mere 70 calories to her intake, but takes up a good portion of her stomach and seems to take the edge off of her almost unquenchable hunger.  She seems calmer and perhaps more svelte.  And as best we can tell it produces no unseemly side effects.