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.

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.

A General Update

First, pictures. We just took them this morning and they're just the cutest thing---like most pictures of Zim.

So, first thing we'll talk about is potty-training. Zim has been doing fantastic. He hasn't had an accident since the last time I posted that he had one, which means that we are one day short of a month accident free. I think he's actually potty-trained. Finally. God, I really sometimes thought we'd never do it but we're finally there. I'm so proud of the whole family---me, Fathead and, of course, my wonderful little Zim.

In other news, Zim had his 6-month check-up at the vet this past Friday and I'm really overall not happy with how it went and Fathead and I have decided we need to make some changes in light of it.

First, Zim has developed a fear of the vet. We were hoping that stuffing hot dogs and cheese into him would help but it only did so much. It kept him calm right up until he got onto the table, but even with those tasty treats on offer, getting up on the table still definitely freaked him out, even though he'd been calm (well, probably more expectant since he knew we had good treats) up until then. Then the poking and prodding happened and the most I could get him to do was lick a treat. Then they needed to put stuff in his eyes. He was fine for the first drop, but for the second he knew what was happening and he growled. It was then that things went to shit and that I really wish that Fathead and I had made better decisions.

First, they suggested a muzzle. I was not entirely comfortable with this, but I do think it was necessary for the eye drops. Even after a fair amount of conditioning, it's not his favorite thing when I clear his eyes. Having a stranger put cold drops in his eyes when he was at the scary vet was going to get someone bitten. 

What I didn't like, though, was when they suggested that we leave and they take him in back. We agreed and I really think it was the wrong decision. The entire time we were away, all I could think about was my baby and I immediate felt like I'd been a terrible parent for agreeing to let them take him back when I wasn't really comfortable with the suggestion in the first place. When they have him out of my sight I have no idea what's being done to him and I know he's past his threshold already because he wont take the very rare and absolute best treats ever of hot dog bits. I was scared they would traumatize and ruin my dog.

They didn't, but Fathead and I talked about it and we're going to proceed differently moving forward. 

First, we're going to try going into the vet whenever we go into PetSmart and do some counter-conditioning with him. They said that as long as we ask the receptionist we can even take him into the exam room to try and get him okay with being on the table.

Second, we're not going to let them take him in back again. Anything they can do to our dog they can do in front of us. It was an uncomfortable experience and we're not having it again.

Third, despite what it sounds like the vet wanted to do, he will not be muzzled regularly for visits. Yes, if he growls (or if we already know from experience that he will), he will get muzzled but only then and only for the purpose of whatever he's growling for. Zim is a sweet dog who loves everyone and his first reaction to something he doesn't like is to get away, not get aggressive. He's not generally aggressive at the vet, even if he is very scared (and he is). He doesn't need a muzzle 95% of the time that he's at the vet and I refuse to have my dog muzzled unnecessarily.

Lastly, we're going to watch when we schedule our vet visits. We've decided to make sure they're all with Dr. Pavlovsky, who Zim has never had a problem with and who we like a lot. Unlike the vet who was there at this last visit, Dr. Pavlovsky has never asked that Zim be taken in back even though he did once growl when someone tried to force his mouth open. Basically, I think we're going to have an easier time going with our plan of no muzzling unless necessary and no being taken in back. I also think he's less eager to push unnecessary tests which is an unrelated bonus. Honestly, if he were to open up his own private practice while we were still in Champaign, we would follow him to his new practice. I'd been thinking earlier that we should be trying to make sure we only see Dr. Pavlovsky and this latest vet visit has solidified it.

And now, to end this post on a happier note, Zim has gotten huge---by which I mean he has apparently grown 2.1 lbs in the past month, because he weighed in at 16.4 lbs at the vet. I was absolutely amazed. I mean, I suppose he has been looking a lot less tiny next to the other dogs at the dog park but I had no idea he'd grown so much. Honestly, since he'd been static at about 14.3ish lbs for the last 2 months before this visit I'd figured he'd probably stopped growing. I mean, I figured he might get another growth spurt around nine months, but I honestly didn't really think he would. Well, he's 2 days from nine months old and here he's grown 2 lbs. I mean, he's still a slight, skinny little thing but he's definitely bigger.

Neutered

So Zim was neutered yesterday. We dropped him off at 7 AM, expecting to get him back around 4 but then they called and said he should be ready around noon so we went and grabbed him. He was REALLY ready to go home, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that his mouth felt funny and they were keeping him in *gasp* a cage. He really hated that last part---you could hear him protesting in the waiting room.

Anyway, so we took him home and at first he passed out, like this:

Then he woke up and started licking his incision site, so we put him in this:

Unfortunately, it turns out that Zim is too flexible for a Kong Cloud, the little brat. As soon as he got over his horror at having it on and stopped trying to slip it, he just reached right around and started licking the incision site. So then we went out and bought him this:

To which his reaction was this:

As you can see, he did eventually get over it. He still doesn't particularly care for it, but he's accepted it, at least. Unfortunately, though, not being able to lick his incision site also means not being able to clean up after he goes to the bathroom, which upsets him greatly. He keeps stopping to try and clean up and obviously gets very frustrated when it doesn't work. We have to carry him home so we can clean him up. He does, at least, seem to get over it once we do it for him.

Zim's Second Fear Period

So, I think that Zim is going through his second fear period. He's suddenly starting to whine and whatnot in the car and he was scared at the vet on Monday. We're going to be trying to use food to condition him to fear those things less (we've already made some progress with the scale at the vet, which he's never liked) and trying to ignore his upset to not encourage his fear. Hopefully it all goes well.

Little Zim at the Vet

So, we took Zim to the vet today because he was having problems with loose stool on Saturday (he was going about once every three hours as well) and he had some discharge from his right eye as well. I suspect the stool was either worms (right after we left the vet I saw some specks in his stool) or the fact that he's been on one brand of kibble (Avoderm) and another of canned food (Merrick), which might have been messing him up as well. Either way, we're going to try and get him onto all the same brand of food after his bland diet is done and hope that either that or the deworming he got at the vet takes care of it. We're also going to keep an eye on the discharge and take him back to the vet for it if it doesn't clear up in a couple of days.

Now, for the real reason behind this post---despite stuffing the little one with treats and him always having been fine before, he was super scared at the vet. He was shaking and wouldn't even take food when the vet took him in back to be dewormed---but when they led him back out from the back he was perfectly happy! No more shaking, no whining, tail up, just trotting along like the happiest puppy in the world. It was really strange. Maybe I made him nervous by not putting him down after having him on the scale? He's not a big fan of it and he climbed right onto my shoulder to get off of it. Maybe I should have put him down right away. Whatever it was, hopefully he'll be better at the vet next time---and we'll bring along hot dogs to try and make sure. He loves hot dogs.

He also growled when both the vet and the nurse wanted to look at his teeth. I guess Ben and I will have to be better about getting him used to that. It's funny, though, because I do look at his teeth every now and again to make sure his baby teeth are coming out. That said, I usually don't open his mouth to do that, I just let him open it and then I put a finger in there for him to chew on while I look at his teeth. I guess that's not good enough. We'll work on it to make sure it doesn't get worse as he ages.