I Make A Fresh Catfish Fillet Every Day for My Dog - And Other Ways I Spoil My Pets
I never imagined my life would involve cooking fresh catfish fillets every single day at promptly 3pm to serve on top of expensive, special-ordered, limited-ingredient catfish kibble. Or cooking a bison sirloin shipped from Montana twice a day.
But Lira was alive. She was healthy. She was playful, with a coat that had gotten its shine back. And after two hospitalizations in 2020 and 2021 — nearly two weeks each time, with conversations about euthanasia that I still can't fully think about without my chest tightening — I wasn't taking a single day with her for granted.
The catfish and bison were the least I could do.
Lira the Miracle Puppy — A Birth Story
On April 27, 2016, Lira was born in my home.
Her mother Penny had been surrendered to our rescue a few weeks before giving birth to six puppies. I had just left for work that morning and turned around halfway there because I'd forgotten my sunglasses. I walked back in just as Lira was being born.
I immediately knew something was wrong. Penny moved Lira — still in her birth sac — just outside the whelping box and returned to the first-born puppy. I checked on her and found her moving inside the sac, so I gently pulled it away from her head. And then I saw it: where there should have been skin across her abdomen was a paper-thin clear membrane already splitting and oozing.
I called the vet while carefully wrapping her with the back side of a puppy pad so nothing would stick. I loaded Penny and the first puppy into a box in the car and I held Lira together for the fifteen-minute drive.
Our vet met me in the parking lot. He'd never seen anything quite like it and offered to stitch her up. She was too small for anesthesia, so he used tiny sutures while the vet techs and I held her. down He gave her a 5% chance of surviving the first 24 hours.
She was not interested in that statistic.
The First Year
Lira chose me from the beginning. She would stop nursing to come find me. She was hand-fed every two hours around the clock for the first weeks of her life. When the other puppies went to their new homes, Lira stayed.
Her first year was a study in stubbornness — hers and mine both. Slow weight gain. An incredibly challenging surgery in a reverse oxygen chamber at just 6 months old. Another slim chance at survival - 50/50 this time. More vet visits than I can count. We adjusted her diet constantly, trying to find what her system could handle.
And then she began to thrive.
The Hospitalizations
In December 2020, she got sick in a way that was different from anything before. Vomiting she couldn't stop. Two weeks in the hospital. Talks about quality of life and what came next that I sat with in the car in the hospital parking lot because I couldn't have those conversations inside.
She came home.
July 2021: again. Another two weeks. More conversations I wasn't ready for.
She came home again.
And that's when I found another vet. Worked with new internal specialists willing to try something new. Consulted with a veterinary nutritionist.
I started making the catfish.
What I Learned
I learned that when a dog has fought that hard to be here, you fight back just as hard. You find the specialist. You order the special kibble. You cook the catfish at 3pm & 3am every single day because her system tolerates it and her coat says thank you and she looks at you while she's eating like you hung the moon. We cooked a fresh meal for her 6 times a day, every 4 hours around the clock (yes, even in the middle of the night) for years.
You don't count the cost. You don’t think about the lost sleep. You just do it.
I lost Lira in September 2025. She was nine and a half years old — an extraordinary run for a dog who started at 5% odds in a parking lot.
I would love to make the catfish ten thousand more times.
