Jake and his dinner feasts

Jake certainly eats an interesting and varied diet. I had not meant it to be quite so varied, but due to trying to keep ahead of recalled foods and even foods that might later be recalled due to reports of sick dogs that had been eating them, Jake has gotten to taste varieties of a number of brands. We settled on Canidae for kibble. He was already started on half of each meal being home cooked, so the other half became Canidae All Life Stages, with Canidae Chicken and Rice for one bag. He liked that arrangement! Then we tried Orijen Adult to rotate for the kibble, and that was a big winner. Today we got a small bag of the new Orijen Six Fish, which will work well for treats and later to rotate with his Orijen Adult. The only catch may be that this food suddenly exploded in popularity in the USA, and I'm not certain how long it will be available in my area until production is ramped up. It would be a shame if the sudden increase in demand is too much for them to maintain their usual supply of ingredients and quality control. People have reported to me that Orijen has helped their dogs' coats. Jake's is certainly shining these days.

Dog foods and false reports of problems

Here we are with another beautiful Sunday to report. And speaking of reports, there have been false reports of problems with premium brands of dog kibble. As if it were not enough to have actual, legitimate toxic substances in some dog foods and treats for much of this last year we now have to be wary of people reporting problems when there are none, even going so far as to say that there was an independent lab report verifying this in at least one case. This was done on a site that gets a good bit of traffic, even more readers than actual participants. You have to ask yourself why on earth anyone in their right mind would do this! Maybe I just answered my own question while reading that sentence. Only the insane would pull this stunt. So Jake can return to his usual dinners of a combo of home cooking and either Canidae ALS kibble or Orijen Adult kibble. Jake has turned into an enthusiastic chow hound. Luckily he has never experienced any illness from his various commercial foods and has enjoyed a number of premium brands, none of which were ever recalled. Jake-the-Pup also gets Canidae Snap Biscuits and Darford Dog Biscuits.

(Footnote and one correction: On May 4 there was a scan of an ExperTox report on Pet Food Tracker regarding the result of composite testing of Canidae samples. Today, which is now Sept 5 I'm reading that the actual date of the samples are June and not July as has been stated on various forums previously. Canidae did not even run dog food on that July date, so it could not have been even possible. This is just an added footnote to amend info above. It doesn't prove anything, but does not disprove it either. I'm keeping an open mind on this and will await further testing. Canidae is also doing their own testing and being responsive on this.)

Jake will be 2 in November, so this is just his second summer. Both last spring and this he began to shed clumps of dead coat. The clumps look and feel very much like felted wool, and this is not normal shedding. Last year it went on thru the fall and did not clear up until winter. This year because he was for the first time carrying an adult coat, the shedding was even heavier. Good news is that several weeks ago he began to improve. We don't know what made the difference, but Jake is rarely scratching now. Terrific and even better if we ever figure out what the trigger was. Definitely some type of allergy. Seasonal is our best guess.