Cancer Dog Supplements How Much They Cost

Buford is happy since he found Kendall, Birdie’s daughter. We tracked her down and adopted her after we lost Birdie.   She is a spitting image of her mother. Not as red, but as beautiful.

Cost of the Cancer Dog : Hospice Care

I have been getting a lot of emails on how much it’s costing me to keep Buford on the natural pills, so I’m doing a cost breakdown on the natural supplements I use, here on the supplements page.

Now Buford is technically at the equivalent of Hospice care. He has already had his bad prognosis and outlived that…he’s on borrowed time and my goal is to keep him as healthy and happy as possible during his final days.

He doesn’t get shots anymore because of his broken immune system.  NO chemo, no chemo pills, no anything unless he’s sick, then he goes to the vets.  So far it’s been stress spores, and he’s on meds often for that.  I am only applying Frontline topical to keep off ticks/fleas, otherwise no other pills such as heartworm . That really kills me thinking what if he developed them and that was what killed him, not the cancer? But you do what you can to not compromise his immune system.

So for Buford I’m breaking down the cost for him being a 60# dog on the SUPPLEMENT PAGE    Remember he is a 60# dog and that’s his dose. If my dog was 30 lbs it would cost half as much, and if my dog was 15# it would only cost a quarter of that.

The biggest expense is two fold:

a) THE FOOD!  Oh my goodness, the chicken each night he eats, with a few steaks, turkey parts,  or ground beef thrown in here and there throughout the month. A smaller dog would not cost you as much.  Hubby and I have seriously cut the quality of our food to allow for the extra expense for the dog! Geeze!

b) THE TIME & CARE!   It has cost me a lot of time and pet sitter money. Wherein I used to go to work and leave him now I have to leave him with a pet sitter or take him with me.  He gets too nervous too much and just having someone around is key.   Buford has a large yard and doggie door, but leaving him over 8 hours will send him back to the vet with a stress bacterial infection. I’m not going there, so I pay a friend or family member to check on him and sit a few hours with him.

But how expensive is it really, to be buying time with your pet? Having them in your life a little longer, at the highest quality possible, keeping them pain free and healthy, is simply the fact that your time, effort and investment can beat cancer, if only for a short while.

 

 

Keeping the dog FAT and HEALTHY during cancer is key!

Bufords Health Today:  He is happy, fat, and lazy. And spoiled. This is his own leather couch now,  taped up and well loved by Buford.  Note how much weight he still has on him for a dog with lymph nodes the size of coconuts. Pretty good huh?  Also look under his arm towards his midsection, there is a fatty tumor that is super large. Of course, we can’t get it removed because he can’t go under anesthesia.  It may seep soon and if so I’ll have to get it drained or better yet, it may burst and then we have it cleaned and that will be the end of that. He had another one just like it, that started getting yucky. I took him to the emergency vet when it started draining, and by the time I got him there it BURST all over the place. It was yucky , I’m talking creamy fat, blood and goo all over the dog and the floor. He didn’t seem to be  in any pain and , and $100 bill later they sent him home with first aid cream.  Crazy.

Pork Back Fat for the Cancer Dog Diet

Pork Back Fat off of a Pork Picnic Shoulder

Dr. Carol first told me about the Pork Back Fat.  Let me first explain a regular healthy dog has a hard time processing and digesting fat , fatty tumors will form and it will upset their tummies.  So if your dog is healthy, don’t give them fat.   Now we talk about the cancer dog.  In this case,  I have to feed MY dog and not FEED the cancer, so this meant cutting out grains.  Breads, grains, wheat, rice, and even corn. GONE.   Once you cut out these things, your dog will lose weight. Losing weight is bad in a sense that you don’t want them to become  waxing and waning or unhealthy . You want them to keep their mass and strength. So you have to keep their weight on with something. In my case, Buford’s diet is getting his caloric content and fat from natural animal fats.

If you consider his diet consists of chicken and kale, the only fats he’s getting is really the natural chicken fat, skin, cartilage. Both before picking and afterwards I boil the bones then skim the fat off the top of the chicken stock. All natural and all good for him, however Buford loses interest in eating the same things each day.  He misses his kibbles, corn and grains.  I don’t blame him, he lived on that for 12 years.   Even if I switch him up with Ground Beef (which I only do once per month if I find organic angus and ground meat should be avoided in the cancer dog due to processing agents) or a day of steak, neither of these have enough fat truly to keep his weight on.

ENTER THE PORK BACK FAT : BEWARE OF PROCESSED AND SALTED

So we go through a small stint with the pork back fat.  It’s high in caloric content and low in protein. Great for packing on the calories and when chopped small enough, digestible.   Here is the issue. If you are to buy it in a store it has been salted with kosher style salt to preserve the processing and perhaps to cure it I don’t know. But it’s loaded in sodium and gosh knows what else, and that’s not good.

GET A PORK PICNIC SHOULDER AND TRIM OFF THE FAT

 

You can find the perfect fat on a Pork Picnic Shoulder. I nabbed a good sized one for $1.49 on sale. An $11 piece yielded me a huge pot of BBQ for us humans and six baggies of Pork Back Fat for Buford.  More on the BBQ later.

The first thing you do with the raw pork shoulder, is trim the pork fat off all the way around, It is going to be about 1/2 to 3/4 thick in areas and leaving some raw pork attached is okay. Your goal is to simmer this covered in a fry pan with some water.  You will see it shrink about 25-30% of it’s original size. You may even hear squealing as the outer skin is shrinking.

As you can see above, compare to the very top picture in this post, and the cooking process, the pork has toughened on the skin area and shrunk about 33% of it’s original size. Trim it into small pieces, about 1/2″ to 3/4″ cubes, and you should do this while it’s still warm. You then return the cubes to the fry pan to sizzle them down a bit more.

 

Note the brown edges.

Here’s a video of how to do it:

During this time you will hear the snap, crackle pop and that’s okay, you are rendering down the rest of the pork back fat, making the edges a bit harder and making sure to fully cook the edges to kill any bacteria. I simply brown the edges and drain off a bit of excess grease.  Let them cool and bag them in “snack size bags.”.   A small snack size bag will last you up to two weeks. Feed them as snacks here or there, or in with their food.

It’s funny really, my great grandmother cooked everything with Lard. Now, technically, it’s keeping my dog alive.

BUFORDS HEALTH TODAY:  Great! He’s been pooping like a horse and keeping his weight on. His mood is 250% better because we’ve tracked down and adopted Birdie’s daughters Kendall and Nala. Kendall is 3.5 and Nala is 4, they have different fathers but Birdie was their mom.   Long story short, we are blessed to have these loving girls in our home.  They have some special needs issues, but both girls are happy to be in their new home and well, Buford has immediately taken to Kendall, and she to him. I wonder if he he knows it’s Birdie’s daughter?

Buford is welcoming Kendall into her new home.

He’s very protective of her and has to sleep by her. If she’s up on the couch and he is too tired to jump up, he will whine until he gets a boost to be next to her.  He truly has become protective of her.

Kendall on the left and Nala on the right. They came with these names.