i'm not sure exactly what he was getting was horrible horrible diarrhea constantly..

like getting me up in the middle of the night 2-3 times to go.. the vet did mention at first it might be the fat content in his food..

so we switched to a "bland" diet food and when that didn't work we switched to me boiling boneless skinless chicken breasts and mixing it with rice for him... which didn't work either, however when I switched to hamburger and rice.... it subsided a bit.

Then they decided he had inflammatory bowel disease and put him on a Science Diet ZD formula which made things WAY WAY worse, the fish and potato diet was the last straw before having to do a biopsy on his intestines and colon...

since its worked i'm sooo scared to try anything else for fear of a return of symptoms, i spend most of my time watching him poop and praying its still solid. The vet wants to keep him on this food for 6-8 months to let his insides calm down and heal as they were inflamed then start introducing other protiens back into his diet... sooo i dunno...

he's allergic to wheat gluten, corn fillers, chicken protein and possibly beef protein *sigh* he'd eat anything mind you... but it just has varying degrees of side effects depending on what it is... the wheat and corn seem to have the worst effects on him, chicken is ok so far in small doses...

Kane started losing his hair in spots but they never connected the dots I guess. Mainly his symptoms were gastrointestial and even now if he gets something he's not supposed to, rawhide, someone else's food, etc... the symptoms come back pretty fast. So yeah Kane doesn't get bones, pigs ears, rawhides, nothing... One big thing I noticed upon starting him on the fish and potato (other than him not having chronic diarrhea) was that he no longer has gas, prior to starting this diet he was a little tooting machine which wasn't pleasant to say the least...

"Kane ( her dog ) had the grumbling sounds in his tummy a lot when he was sick, evidentally that is a symptom/sign of this inflammatory bowel disease... but the only definite diagnosis is to do a biopsy of his bowels, which I'm just not willing to do until I have exhausted every other option. He had coccidia (sp?) at the start of this, then a bacterial overgrowth which is caused by the antibiotics killing all his good bacterial in his intestines, so he was on antibiotics for gosh probably a month or more. He did wonderfully while on them, solid stools, but the minute he went off them, back came the diarrhea. So they put him on a tylan powder to see if that would be enough of an anti-inflammatory to allow for proper absorption of his food and it didn't, so we went into food trials while my original vet was screaming cut cut cut!

The way they explained it is the antibiotics act as an anti-inflammatory and settle the bowels and allow them to absorb things better, the fact that the diarrhea returned and stool samples were clean, blood tests were clean, etc... meant that he was a)allergic to something or b)had an autoimmune disease that was caused by.. well no ones sure, they call it inflammatory bowel disease, not to be confused with irritable bowel disease which is caused by stress. The duration and chronicness of his symptoms lead them to believe it wasn't stress even though he is a high strung dog (in my opinion). Which is supported more by the fact that he didn't get diarrhea upon starting daycare... which i totally figured he would, but so far so good.

I did talk with a holistic vet who was leaning towards the same thing, food allergies to.. something.. what I was told is it is a trial and error thing once they get the dog on something that works, they start adding back stuff to their diet to see if they can determine what is causing it.

Unfortunately kane's symptoms were limited, and diarrhea points to almost every illness out there, we did blood tests, fecal studies, barium x-rays to check for blockages, etc and it just got to the point where I wasn't able to afford it even with having pet insurance. The vet did a last ditch effort by trying this food and well it worked, so she wants to stick with it for a while, he'd literally been through 5-6 different foods in as many months and numerous tests, I was stressed, he was miserable all the time, he at first couldn't even have a bowel movement because the muscles there weren't used to actually having to push at all, so he had to relearn how to defecate... I think maybe the 6-8 months was more to let me (and him) kinda de-stress and just relax after being through so much, literally taking him to the vet daily for weeks on end...

So right now I stick with the food, yes eventually I'd like to try and sort out what's causing reactions, maybe it was a puppy thing? Not sure.. but for now.. he's doing well and it's nice not to have to hop around after him with a plastic baggie collecting feces for more tests!"