Kindness? or the complete opposite?

No real knowledge of this condition but it is a pretty clever way of coping with it!

I've seen worse TBH - there was a story on there last week about a collie who was scared of pretty much everything and had to be fitted with special boots to stop him literally eating himself through anxiety, he was looking for a 'forever home' - poor boy sounded like he was under a terrible amount of pressure and there are plenty of healthy dogs with no issue competing for those 'forever homes' :(
 
I think the fact that she has a loving home who have found this strategy to cope - then it's fine and kindness. As long as there are no further side affects (i.e difficulty throwing up or going to the toilet). The family seem to be coping well with the condition and I hope they'll have the common sense if things deteriorate to put down, rather than find other "coping" methods.

If it was a rescue home looking to rehome her, then I'd think it was cruelty and that she should be put down because there are so many more dogs who need the home, and the risk of her going to an ignorant home and suffering further.

Slightly mixed logic there, but hopefully people understand why I've differentiated!
 
This is what my pointers feeding consisted of only a year ago, I did not use this exact method but I did look into it, he had megaoesophagus (enlarged basically, means food can basically leak out of the esophagus and into the lung causing aspiration pneumonia which is a killer!, my dog has a pretty rare and very complexed neuromuscular disease which causes muscle weakness due to interference with nerve-muscle communication. known as myasthenia gravis, his esophagus muscles where effected and basically if his food did not go directly to his stomach he had a risk of aspiration in his lungs which means pneumonia (he has survived 3 bouts of pneumonia which was horrendous to experience he was literally choking on his own saliva being produced in mass amount in his throat/chest) to my vets surprise he pulled through, with aggressive antibiotic treatment) and due to strict and bloody hard/stressful management. He also lost the use of his hind legs and was collpasing, only through my persistence and reading every bit of info I could find got him on the life saving drugs he needed to save his life (this disease goes largely undetected in dogs) and many die as a result.
Raising him (literally standing him up and feeding him balls of food gives a much better chance of him digesting the food fully and into his stomach, we also had to hold him up for 10 mins after food.

My dog now eats perfectly fine and lives a normal life now, had the drugs failed I would not have put him through repeated bouts of illness and I would have put him to sleep.
It is horrendous watching a dog with a severe megaesophagus, its is largely untreatable in the severe form without specialist treatment and even with it but some can be treat with food management like the one in the picture as the most important thing is to prevent aspiration.

I have to say my boy was not born that was he aquired it very suddenly, I decided to try everything in my power to help him recover and I did, infact he hunts once again and no longer required meds after initially having to take 3 lots of tablets every 6 hours in the beginning.
That dog will live a normal life other than when she is feeding or in that seat it looks.
So literally she is fed that way to help the food go down in one go and into her stomach, Im not sure why they add to water to me thats a bit of a risk, rolled firm balls of food are generally the best.
 
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