Mina had a bit of a relapse. She started pooping black, tarry stool. That's always a bad sign. She vomited her food again. I started panicking.
I cooked up some plain old rice, waited a couple hours from her vomit-fest, and then started feeding her in 1/2 cup increments. Healthy appetite, that's for sure.
That was last night. This morning she pooped dark black stuff followed by some slightly more normal looking stuff.
So I think she is allergic to something in her diet.
The possible culprits:
* Potatoes
* Rolled Oats
* Barley
All the other ingredients she has never been intolerant of, and so I'm crossing them off the list for now.
I went back to look at the dog food she had horrible problems with and it has both pearled barley and potatoes. The pearl barley, however, is listed in the first five ingredients.
So I'll cut out the barley and see how that goes. Having her on an already simple diet makes figuring what could be causing her digestive problems a lot easier!
Yet there are some self appointed experts in the dog blogosphere who will tell you that dogs do well on grain.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that people do so well on it.
I've found my dogs to be pretty adaptable. Mina does better with a grain-based diet than a meat-based diet. Celeste is the opposite. Mina is very sensitive, while Celeste has a stomach of iron and steel.
ReplyDeleteBarley is harder for me to digest than rolled oats, white rice and even brown rice. I guess Mina and I have that in common. :)
My Black Russian Terrier suddenly at 8 years old developed the dog equivalent of Irritable Bowel Syndrom - the symptoms sound like your dog's. Anyway, she first got put on a canned prescription dog food -- IB, I think? Anyway, from there, we tried a number of commercial foods but ultimately the only one she can eat without relapsing turned out to be "Science Diet Sensitive Stomach." She's been fine on that for almost 3 months now. Thought you might want to give it a shot.
ReplyDeleteI found your blog via BadRap and am in love with Mina. My 5-year old pit is allergic to barley, potato, peanut butter, kelp, chicken, turkey and beef. I broke down and splurged on a blood test after several bad cases of hives in a short period of time.
ReplyDeleteHi AM,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the nice comment!
Your poor dog, that's a lot to be allergic to! What does s/he do well on?