It's Food Switch Time

Itching paws. Itching face. Dry skin. Diarrhea. Loose stools.

Ugh, dog owners, this is the worst day ever. Especially when you've bought a 30 lb bag of dog food that cost lots of money.

Rusty unfortunately has an incredibly horrible food allergy to chicken products/byproducts/etc...

Food allergies and food intolerances (oops, shall I say food that is too rich for their doggie system) is fairly common. You just have to find the right food.

After doing some googling, posting on doggie message boards and searching high and low for the correct food, I've gotten a few suggestions.

I'm going to start off with the research -

Signs & symptoms with recommendation of home cooked diet for 12 weeks

Signs & symptoms with recommendation of venison, fish, duck OR home cooked diet (and then an exclusion diet if the above proteins are still making it worse)

More exclusion diet (but totally biased)

Duck and potato based diet recommendation

And then there's hypoallergenic dog food. But that's well, what we need, right?

As I sat on the floor in the living room, I realized I had been awake for a long time, trying to research dog food. I hate researching dog food. It's for a dog. They should be able to eat anything but the poop soup in the backyard tells a different story.

After researching and trying to wrap my mind around the innerworkings of dog bowels, there are several options, all of which depend on what your dog is allergic to. So far allergy = deboned chicken, chicken meal, ground chicken, chicken by-products.

You should do an elimination diet and switch to something completely different. Check.

You can home cook food. Ok, but how expensive is that?

You can go purely raw food diet and do no kibble at all with Nature's Variety. Um, Ok. I could be up for that if we didn't have painted wood floors.

Or you could just do what Bimmer Man wants and buy Lamb & Rice formula dog food because that's what his family has done in the past. Ok, but he didn't buy dog food.

And then, BAM! I double checked a golden retriever message board and someone else had the same problem!

They just recommended adding pumpkin to firm up stools. Um, this was a doggie allergy, thank you very much. I need a different dog food.

I got a recommendation for Solid Gold and also for California Natural. After comparing the ingredients I bought a 5 lb bag of California Natural Lamb Meal & Rice.

We had to switch instantly, so the best way to do it is mix with homecooked rice OR cottage cheese to prevent diarrhea.

No loose poops since Friday. No nasty itchies yet.

But then again, I feel like I've been discussing poop for awhile now. So don't be surprised if poop comes up again.