Post Stroke Feeding

[Scuttlebutter]

Our darling elderly greyhound bitch had a mini stroke nearly two weeks ago. She is very frail, but has regained her joie de vivre. One of the effects is that her face/mouth is partially paralysed, thus making eating very difficult and incredibly messy (we don't mind that, and the other two enjoy hoovering up the debris).

Does anyone have any experience with feeding in these circumstances and can you offer any helpful hints/suggestions?

Thanks.

Bumping for you Scuttle :)

Bumping again...

I would suggest mushing up food so she can lap it up as the tongue is controlled by a different facial nerve to the face and lips. I suspect the dropping food is due lack of co-ordination to close her lips around her chewing teeth.

You can get liquid diets high in nutrients that she can lap up from your vet. Things like liquivite or enteral care. Or palatable recovery diets that are very soft and can be warmed to smell nice. Ask your vets for options.
Or you can blend some food up with a blender - we find blended warmed liver (yuck but the dogs love it!) goes down well to get appetites back.
Or warm freshly cooked chicken meat.
Good luck hope she's feeling better now.

Thank you both for your helpful words. LIz, that makes a lot of sense - once you'd written that, I had a sort of Homer Simpson style "Doh" moment - thinking to myself "Of course, you numpty. Her tongue works perfectly!"

There is absolutely nothing wrong with her appetite - that has come back with a vengeance though all three were a bit off their food in the recent very hot weather. We are now working on a rather messy but good natured combo of feeding from the bowl and some hand feeding. She seems to enjoy having slightly smaller meals and more frequent ones than before so we are working with that - still a bit of trial and error but things are very much better than they were. As a bonus the other two are delighted since they get to "tidy up" once she has finished.