Allergies

So, the rule with Zim seems to be that if he really likes something, he's allergic to it, at least as far as foods go.

First, we discovered he was allergic to chicken. This was something of a hunch on my part. He'd gotten really itchy since we put him on a chicken based kibble and was starting to chew some of the fur off on his butt. His poop was bad too; it was consistently soft and, oddly, smelled like chicken. Now, obviously it smelled like poop too, but it definitely had a distinctly chickeny smell to it too and so did his pee. Seeing him itching a lot and given that smell, I figured something was off with the way his body was processing chicken so we stopped giving him chicken and he got better.

Then he got demodex and his allergies sprang up. We've spent months dealing with those on and off. We've gone through a whole food trial, and he did get better with it, but he's still itchy so we're pretty sure he has environmental allergies. We tried antihistamines for that but they didn't seem to help. Eventually we're thinking we'll start him on allergy shots but since he's not really suffering (no fur coming off or anything), we figure we'll wait on that until we're getting income again (we're currently studying for the bar and will be starting fellowships in September).

Anyway, we also started introducing foods back into his diet to see if he's allergic. As part of this, we switched his food to Merrick's grain free pork food because we wanted to get him off the expensive allergy food. We knew that it had a lot of new stuff in it but we figured that if he reacted to it, we could narrow down what exactly it was that he was allergic to in it later because it would almost certainly be one of the protein sources (pork and salmon) or possibly the sweet potato. Well, he did react. Within a week he became super itchy and his poop never firmed up. Well, we've switched his food again, this time to Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream (fish based) and already things seem better. So, it looks like he's allergic to pork as well as chicken.

Here's the thing: pork and chicken are Zim's two favorite proteins. He loves chicken especially but he's also quite fond of pork. It's tragic, really. I hate seeing him not be able to have things he likes because of allergies but obviously I don't want him to be super itchy either.

Zim's Birthday Party

So, Zim had his birthday party today. It wasn't actually his birthday, but his birthday is this coming Tuesday and Saturdays work much better for parties so we had it today. Anyway, it was wildly successful. There was a cake for the people (of whom there were about 11) with his picture on it as well as some "cake" for Zim (his hypoalergenic food mixed together with fish oil and wrapped in bacon). Then he got his presents (all wrapped in the same box), which he unwrapped himself and really adored. He got a new Kong Wobbler (since his old one is kind of torn up), an IQ Ball and an Invinciblez Snake. I think he might get a bit frustrated with the Treat Ball, but he was totally taken with the snake. He squeaked that thing just forever. Good decision on my part to get that for him, I think.

So, now, pictures and video from the big event!!

The cake that the humans got (Zim wanted some too, but unfortunately for Birthday Boy, he is on an allergy trial).

The video of Zim opening his presents. It's actually 3 videos put together, because I took it with a normal digital camera instead of a video camer, but you get most of it.

Birthday Boy was so pooped after his party that he just could not bother to care when we draped his new squeaky snake over him.

So Far, Today Has Been a Much Better Day

I'm so proud of my little fuzzbutt. After having so much trouble with him yesterday that I actually got mad at him for the first time, my baby has been completely wonderful today---partially due to his own wonderful personality and partially due to the fact that his mommy and daddy are committed to trying to keep working with him to make things better.

So, as I wrote (late) last night, Zim does not like getting the peroxide cream for his demodex put on his face. We'd managed to get him to be okay with having it put on most of his face, but we were still getting growling and snapping when we tried to apply it to his cheek. We were worried that we might have to makeshift muzzle him for the process, but we were also worried about how that would impact him---it sure wasn't going to make him like the process and we were worried it would make it worse. Well, we just decided to say "fuck it" and this morning, we pulled out some cooked pork from a pork roast we had and fed it to him the entire time we were applying the cream despite his food allergy trial. It worked beautifully. Not a peep from him, only happy munching. We're going to keep it up for the demodex cream, only giving him anything other than the allergy food when we do this and keeping it to pork because a) then we know exactly what's ruining the allergy trial if he doesn't improve and b) we're pretty sure that he's not allergic to pork, so we are hoping that we'll see an improvement even though we are breaking the trial. I do feel a bit bad that we're doing this, since we do need to get to the bottom of his allergies but I do think this is the best route. We can't have him snapping at us during medical treatment and it's important we clear up the demodex because I don't think we'll see an end to his itching if we don't even with the food trial.

In other news, Zim had a photo shoot today and he was a very good boy for the photographer. I wanted to get some photos for his first birthday (which is coming up really soon---December 4th!) and so I went looking for a photographer and I found this woman: http://www.angelsallade.net/. I really liked her photography, because she seemed to capture the pets' personalities so we hired her to come out today to do a session with Zim. She should have some photos up from the shoot on Facebook sometime tonight and I'm very excited to see how they turned out. From what I saw, she seemed to be getting some really great ones.

So, yeah, today I remembered why I love my baby so much and why it is that I've only ever once gotten angry with him even though we've had him for about 10 months now.

I Got Mad at My Dog Tonight

I've never really been mad at Zim before. He's annoyed me before and he's tested my patience, but before tonight, he'd never made me mad at him.

So, Zim's demodex seemed to be getting worse, so we took him back to the vet and got a cream for it. Well, he doesn't like having it applied to the pink demodex spots at all. We think it's because this hurts (the cream is peroxide based and must sting) and then when we first started applying it, I think we made matters worse by how we were holding him and the fact that we just didn't really know how to go about making it a positive experience. So he growled, and eventually he started snapping.

We've made some progress with getting him better with having the cream put on him---no one holds him while it gets put on and we try and stuff him with treats (by which we mean kibble, since we can't resort to anything higher value due to the damn allergy trial---which he ruined yesterday anyway by stealing some Thanksgiving turkey). So, he's okay, now, with getting the cream put on all the spots but the couple that are on his right cheek. With those he still growls and snaps---and worse, as he snaps, he eats the damn cream!! Well, all this makes putting the cream on him very unpleasant and I dread having to put the damn stuff on him twice a day. And tonight, as he snapped at me and licked the cream from my finger as I reached for his cheek for the umpteenth time, I just, well, I'd had enough. I got really mad. We've had so much trouble dealing with it and I'm sick of getting snapped at, annoyed that this irritated cream-eating behavior comes with it and afraid that's he's going to escalate and really bite me despite the fact that there is now food and a clicker and no restraint involved in this whole hellish process.

We've thought about looping a leash around his face just for putting the stuff on his cheek, to try and avoid me really getting bitten and since the positive reinforcement doesn't seem t be helping with that one spot, but then I think, well, won't that just make the experience worse for him? If we resort to that, mightn't we end up moving him so far backwards that he won't let us do the other spots and maybe not want to be handled at all? Because when he's not at the vet or getting a cream that stings put on his face, he has no problem with me touching all of those spots and even manipulating them to a point (he doesn't like having his head grabbed and moved but is fine with chin grabbing, lip lifting and all simple touching).

Maybe we should just give up on a strict allergy trial for a while and shove something really good into him while this happens. As I said before, it's not like he didn't ruin the trial anyway with the turkey. Maybe a few days delay in getting it started again will be worth it and we can get him to cooperate with getting his demodex under control.

Well, either way, tonight was terrible with putting the damn stuff on and it just left me really mad at the dog. Then, as soon as we were done, he grabbed something he oughtn't and I had to take it away and I basically told Fathead to hurry up and take Zim to bed with him. He'd said he was going to bed already and I was mad enough that I wanted no delays. I just wanted Zim out of my hair.

And now I feel really guilty that I got mad at my baby and that I acted mad.

My Dog is On an Allergy Trial and I Cried About It

So, Zim has probably always had some sort of light allergy. He's always had dry skin and he's always scratched and chewed at himself, although once we took him off a chicken-based food, it was never to the point where he was losing fur (and even then, it was very bad at all, people that weren't me and Fathead didn't notice at all). Well, this last week we noticed he's scratched some fur off his face and cut himself, so we took him to the vet. Turned out he had one (yes, one) live demodex mite there, so that's why he's scratching. We're not even treating it because the vet thinks he'll fight it off himself since it's such a mild case (at first they thought all the mites were dead). But, based on his history we did decide to go ahead and start him on an allergy food trial. This makes me so sad. At first I only thought it would be slightly inconvenient but now I know that it's super sad.

Zim's first birthday is coming up and I was going to make him a cake. No idea how I'm going to do that now. So, yeah, I cried. And I'm hoping to figure out a good solution. Maybe there are some other foods out there with hydrolyzed protein that I could turn into an awesome treat for him? It just feels really lame to be turning his normal food into a cake. I may actually even call his vet and see if there are other things I can feed him in order to make this one day work. :(

What's worse, the holidays are coming up. My boy is going to miss out on turkey and al manner of good stuff. Plus, we now have to carry treats on us so people can given him treats in stores, since we have to control what he eats.

This sucks.