We pulled up past the house to where the kennels were located at the back of the farm property. It was time for Meatball to go to the Doggie Spa.

We had been communicating with Kaylie about Meatball's imminent arrival, but it wasn't she who was here today, but rather her partner Madison, and he seemed to be a man of few words.

I opened up the green reusable Lunds bag to show him her special supplies. "This is her food," I said, pointing to the box of what Axel calls her Honestly Bankrupt dehydrated food. Honestly, we never thought we'd pay this much for anything for a dog. But as I've told you before (whether you wanted to hear it or not), her stomach is sensitive, and we're sensitive to not having to wake up eight times a night. Hence the desperation, or determination, to try anything.

"You just mix it with water," I explained to Madison, who nodded. And then I remembered the vase. At home, we use a measuring cup to measure out the water needed, like normal people. But we only have one measuring cup that's big enough, and Axel didn't want to risk losing such a high-use item. So before we left home, he grabbed a vase. He poured in 1 ⅔ cups of water and affixed a piece of masking tape to the vase. "This will be so much easier for them," he declared, ever the fixer. "They can just fill it to the line."

Fast forward to this moment where I am explaining to Madison that my dog needs her special food fed to her, and he can just use her special vase to help him measure the water. And then I pulled out the mixing fork that Axel had included.

"So," Madison said slowly, looking at the vase and fork in my right hand. "She eats out of this?"

I can definitely see why he thought that.

For our glorious few days away (no 5AM wakeups! No two walks a day - no walks at all a day!), Axel would often look over in the direction of the kennel and say, "I wonder if they fed Meatball her breakfast out of her vase."

Luckily, it was Kaylie that was there when we went to pick Meatball up, most likely because her husband never wanted to see us and our fork-fed dog ever again.

Yet for some reason, we've got the vase in our cupboard still, I guess waiting for Meatball's next kennel experience.

Or maybe, just maybe, we'll feed her from it one of these days.