What's wrong with Veronica

Veronica has always been on the small side. For crying out loud, she was six pounds when we brought her home. She’s grown tall, even taller than Jake but still hasn’t reached thirty pounds. People used to come over and ask what was wrong with her. She’s so skinny. I always replied, “Boxers have a hard time putting on weight”. This is what the vet told me on her first visit, and I believed it even though Ramona never had a problem putting on weight.  But I don't recall ever measuring her food.  Anyway, even though he scarfs her food, we’ve always held tight to what the feeding instructions should be. We don’t want another fat dog. (No offense, Jake.) We took her to the vet one day because while she overcame wetting the bed, she began having very loose, sloppy stools, topped with a squirt of cherry sauce. She even had two sloppy accidents in the house.  It became apparent that she was ill. That was about two or three months ago. The vet immediately admitted that the amount he told us to feed her was too little, and that we should bump it up from 2 cups a day to 3 cups. I had a rush of guilt. We knew she was still hungry, and we didn’t feed her more. Even though she’s skinny, she is bouncing off the walls with energy and super affectionate. But the poop thing scares us. The poor thing has had a finger up you-know-where more times than I’m comfortable with. She’s been on medicated food, pills and some other powder medication and she still has the sauce. The only thing that’s changed is that she isn’t having the accidents anymore, but on her last visit, she lost two pounds. The vet told us not to worry…yet. We’ll have her weighed tomorrow. I told her last week (and I looked her in the eyes) to GAIN WEIGHT. I hope she understands.

A few weeks ago, Jake started spending time with Veronica in her cage, which is a one-bed cage. We keep his bed next to the couch. One night he decided that he wanted to stay the night with her. We obliged. He started getting comfortable, so we moved his bed in there officially. He has the choice during the day to stay in or stay out, but he stays in at night. We don’t know if he knows she is ill and wants to keep her company, or if he is jealous of her awesome pad. Maybe he’s afraid of being alone. Either way, it’s cute.