What's For Dinner?

We all know too well about Barry's digestive troubles. Pinpointing the exact issue may never happen. We can just help by eliminating certain things and staying consistent. Consistency isn't always easy when you eliminate one thing and add another in order to find the culprit of his issues.

Hold me Daddy. My tummy hurts.

I recently posted about giving Barry probiotics, kefir specifically. We have been doing the pumpkin thing as well, that has been something we have been mixing in his food pretty consistently since the beginning. Then once he seemed better we'd stop putting it in his food. Then we'd start again once he had diarrhea. See the pattern? So we've decided to continue giving him pumpkin with his food. It's relatively inexpensive and it's healthy for him so there isn't any harm in giving him the pumpkin each day regardless of his stools.

Since adding and keeping with the Kefir we've noticed he has had pretty normal poo. We give him about a quarter cup in the AM and that's it. Just once per day. Another relatively cheap addition that we can continue giving him that won't hurt. Now, his poo has been on the mushy side a few times but no diarrhea so I am hesitantly optimistic that this stuff is helping him. Time will tell but so far so good.

We also recently started  noticing small patches along his belly and thigh and through his side on the backs of his legs and near his bottom. Dry, round patches where there is some hair loss. Barry didn't seem too bothered by them but he has been sort of chewing and scratching at them infrequently. I looked up a few possible things that could cause this and one of the first things that came up was a food allergy. The more I looked into it the more I have become convinced that Barry has a food allergy. Obviously his main source of food is the kibble we feed him. We've been feeding him Blue Buffalo Wilderness Chicken. Blue Buffalo is a decent food and is well ranked with very few questionable ingredients. We don't know what he could be allergic to.

Since I get into everything who knows what is causing me to be sensitive!

We have started to slowly introduce him to a new food that is ranked very high and is all human grade with great ingredients. It's called The Honest Kitchen: Love. It's a little more expensive (it's dehydrated and a 10 lb box makes 40 lbs of food) but only by about twenty cents per pound. We will see how he does on the new food. It will be a while before we completely switch over as we're doing a slow incorporation.

So far he seems to enjoy the taste of his new food and he sure was excited to open the package when it came!