Something’s up with Jethro

The other week, Jethro wasn’t well.

To fix his guts, I put 1/2 tsp of food grade diatomaceous earth. I got the tip from Aria’s foster years ago, and it usually works.

It did this time as well. Took a few days. I was going to call the vet one day, but during his walk he had a normal-for-him dump. Alleluia.

Now, he won’t eat. Hasn’t eaten much in a few days. That’s not typical.

But he’ll eat treats – dog treats, lunchmeat, cheese.

I’m going to do a test. I’m guessing that he probably doesn’t like Iam’s any more. I’ve been trying this or that canned food to augment the Iam’s, and the ones he likes are the ground ones, the ones that coat the kibble. Tells me that maybe he isn’t digging the taste of Iam’s.

I was mixing kibble. Iam’s with some high end food. I’m thinking that was what they liked. Then, I bought some Merrick beef and bacon, and they hated it. Neither one would touch their food with that in it. Now I’m stuck with 40 lbs of the stuff. Dammit.

I saw a documentary on Amazon about how they need to eat raw food, not kibble. So I tried some refrigerated dog foods, even raw ground beef.

Both of them loved it.

Then I calculated how much I spend on food, and stopped nearly all of it, using the cans I had in stock. Just Iam’s and a few tablespoons of canned. Not a big hit for either.

So I’ve been shopping and picked up the beef & sweet potato kibble they liked before. It’s hard as hell to find food for Jet. He’s got an allergy to poultry. He can tolerate some foods with chiggin by-products. But cooked chicken, and any chicken food will turn his guts to water. Since I found that out, there’s been no drama around here. It’s a shame, because I could feed Aria normal chicken dog food and she’d be happy. But I can’t risk her leaving some in her bowl (she will, usually in the morning), and I don’t want to buy tons of food, and deal with that.

And stores around here don’t stock a big selection of non chicken foods for large dogs. All the kibble I looked at, not labeled for large dogs, has bits the size of cat food.

So we’ll see.

I’ll use up the can from this morning, and give him some of the good stuff and see.