High Maintenance

My little dog is so high maintenance.   I guess I’m not surprised, his mom is pretty high maintenance, and don’t they say that animals resemble their owners?

Arthur has had a problem with puking for most of his life.  He is on a pretty normal schedule of throwing up about every 10-14 days.  I have gone through phases of trying to figure it out, changing his food, putting him on different kinds of probiotics, giving him Greek yogurt, nothing seemed to change it.  I figured it was a food allergy and I didn’t know what else to do.

He also has a spot on his back, an itchy, dark spot on his white fur that has become not only increasingly tacky, but also increasingly uncomfortable for him.  I finally took him in to the vet to see what we could do about it.  This is apparently a food allergy related issue, as well.  After two different visits, changing his food to a science diet that made him even more sick, and more itchy, the vet and I decided to try him on a new raw diet and she also put him on a couple of different prescription strength probiotics, to try to get his guts back to normal.

Let me tell you something about my lifestyle.  I don’t cook.  First of all, when I’m the only person eating, it’s really more affordable to eat Chipotle most of the time.  If I were to cook, food goes bad in the fridge before I can handle eating it for five nights in a row.  But also, cooking is not something I enjoy.  At all.

So, when I looked into raw dog food for my dog, it was roughly six times the cost of what I had been feeding him (and I was already feeding him an all-natural dog food from a whole foods type pet store…read that- not cheap).  I was stressing out about how I was going to be able to feed my dog, myself, and pay my mortgage.  So, I looked online and found a recipe for raw dog food you can make yourself (which is much more affordable), and my mom and I made it on Monday.

I can’t believe I’m making food for my dog, when I won’t make people food.

It was actually really fun!  The recipe had ground meat, veggies, and it required sardines, which, when we put them through the food processor, along with the other ingredients made her house smell like a fart (wow, Arthur, your mom and Grammy love you very much!).  But, he loves his food, and gives me lots of fishy kisses; as though he knows how much work it took to make it for him.

His tummy seems to be better and he’s not waking me up in the middle of the night scratching.  I think he’s on the mend.

Early morning fish breath kisses.