Well I went to the holistic vet who was the one that had given me a "Cook for your dog" paper but didn't specifiy what to avoid or add supplements! Anyways, I told her about the bloody diarrhea, his skinniness (he had lost 10 lbs!) the lack of luster in his coat. Well (she's an idiot for starters and is jumpy around my dog!) I had to tell her that I wanted an EPI test done on him! So she did the test then a couple days later said that it came back negative. So she suggested the sweet potatoe/pumpkin diet...nothing else and didn't even tell me for how many days. Nothing.

I got fed up with her and her holistic -BLEEP- and went to another vet. I did give my dog the sweet potatoe diet thing (cost me over $45 for cans of the stuff) and it helped produce solid stools but what nutrition was he getting out of it? I added some taste of the wild. So anyways the new vet checked out my dog, read over the EPI test that I had the holistic vet fax over to him, and he told me that he was going to give my dog a bland dog food sample then issued some probiotic (one in paste and a packet of pills). Let me tell you that stuff worked wonders!!!! Better than the probiotics that the holistic vet had issued me months ago.

Now the new vet doesn't like Taste of the Wild; he says it has way too much protein and suggested that I go to Royal Canine (NO!) or one of the crappy brand dog foods. Obviously I didn't take his advice and went straight for Natural Balance Limited Diet. He's been doing EXCELLENT on that. He's back to a great healthy weight and looks good and his stools are solid every time!!! Just have to figure out the itchy skin problem now and I think I'm going to try out the cod fish liver oil and vitamin E!

Thank you for the EPI test suggestion!

I was having trouble with JD with itchy skin and itchy feet last summer. We think part of it is an allergy to blackberry bushes which are in abundance around our field.

I did switch JD to TOTW Salmon and it did wonders for his skin and coat. My vet has no problem with the amount of protein in it, fyi.

I will try to go back to TOTW definitely, just little by little!