A diet is for the dogs

There are many lessons I’ve learned from my dogs – if someone doesn’t want to play it’s not you, it’s them; also, puppy dog eyes get a better response than barking; also, investigating other people’s poo can be a revelation (metaphorically, of course) – but lately, something new.

This entails the 9-year-old whippet, aka the whippopotamus. She’s a big-boned lady. She wasn’t always. Time was she was svelte, sleek, running swift as a canine arrow.

Food was never a concern. She’d take it if she felt like it, she’d leave it if she didn’t. She enjoyed treats but didn’t have a constant supply of them, so was happy when she got them, unbothered when there were none.

She took her pleasures elsewhere, lying in a rogue sunbeam, taking long walks, chasing ghosts, rolling in something obscene. She grew older, heading into doggy dotage, and too many treats and a slowing metabolism meant she picked up weight, but nothing scary. At 16.5kg, the vet said she mustn’t gain more.

And then I went away for several weeks, leaving the family in charge of feeding. However, the whippet was reluctant. She’s never been food driven, but this lack of appetite caused anxiety in her human slaves.

Sweetly, endearingly, Himself started to cook her plates of chicken and white rice, boiled together for flavour, just as we’d done to tempt our dying dog in her final days a few years before. The whippet was delighted, wolfing down what was to her a stream of delicious treats.

When I came home the whippet weighed 18.9kg. She was officially fat.

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All the more to love, you might say, but no: her little wobbly ankles, her thick body, her panting face… None of this was good, so the vet put her on measured rations of doggy diet food.

Slowly, the weight started to slip off. However, the whippet’s plump soul protested. Unpoliced, she’d muscle into the other hound’s food, hoover up burnt popcorn kernels under the couch and lick stains on the pavement.

She’s slimmer now, less panty, less wobbly, back on normal food as before, happier, but unfortunately the new-found greediness remains. Our pavements have never been so clean.

I know how she feels: go on diet once, and be food-obsessed for the rest of your life.