This is Zuzu, our five year old mini-schnoodle. My daughter Allison and I found her trudging along the side of a snowy country road on a ten degree January morning three years ago, abandoned by her former owners. Her long, tangled poodle coat was matted with dirt and snow, and when Allison picked her up, she was nothing but a little, bony bundle with frightened eyes, but friendly and happy to make our acquaintance. As Allison fed Zuzu from a small package of Ritz Bitz crackers she found in her purse, I called my husband on my cell phone said brightly, "Guess what I'm bringing home?"
"Sausage biscuits?" he asked eagerly.
"No! Something even better!"
"Uhh...ham and cheese biscuits?" he asked dubiously. "But I don't know if I'd call those
better, necessarily..."
"Our new dog," I interrupted. "Our-new-dog-we-just-found-by-the-side-of-the-road-see-you-in-twenty-minutes," and ended the call before he could splutter out a response.
Fortunately, he fell in love with Zuzu at first sight. We gave her the name of George Bailey's little daughter in the movie
It's a Wonderful Life: Zuzu was the girl who walked home from school in the wintery weather with her coat unbuttoned so that she wouldn't crush her rose petals and then had to go to bed with a feverish cold.
Fast forward almost three years.
One day in early October, it occurred to me that Zuzu seemed to be scratching a lot. I mean, like, a
lot. It seemed to be all she was doing.Other than the scratching, she seemed fine. Her appetite was good, she was playing rambunctiously with our other two dogs, Dobby and Izzy, and she was making a good show of barking furiously at every mother pushing a baby stroller or little boy riding a bike past our house. She interrupted these pleasurable activities to lie on the floor biting her paws, and I felt guilty, remembering that I'd forgotten to stop by the vet's office to get the flea and tick medicine we drip on the back of the dogs' necks to protect them from bites during the warm months when they're outside playing at the dog park more often.
Because fleas, right? That's why dogs scratch.
That night, Zuzu scratched practically all night long. She sleeps in regal splendor on a king-sized bed that she kindly allows my husband and I to share with her, and all night that night, the mattress jiggled and shook and vibrated from her endless biting, licking, and digging. We had an uneasy night of sleep. When the alarm went off the next day, Zuzu didn't greet us with exuberant kisses as she usually does. Instead, she lay on her side, panting heavily.
"Zuzu?" I said uncertainly, "what's wrong with Mommy's little cuddle puppy?" (I talk like an idiot to all three dogs; you might as well know that now.) I moved to pick her up, and that's when I noticed that her hindquarters were chewed completely raw. The hair was gone and she was bloody. I simply couldn't get to the telephone fast enough, and called the vet's office to get the earliest appointment I could schedule.
The vet checked Zuzu out about an hour later and said, "Lots of dogs are allergic to flea bites, but this looks like something more. The way she's bitten herself, and the fact that she's chewing the hair off by her tail and gnawing on her front paws seems to indicate a food allergy."
"A
food allergy?" I said incredulously. "You mean, like a
child?" I have friends with children who are allergic to dairy, to gluten, to peanuts, all things that have become more common in our society for whatever reason, but it had never once occurred to me that
dogs could fall victim to the same problem.
The vet patted Zuzu soothingly while preparing a cortisone injection. "I know it sounds strange, but dogs can be allergic to many of the same things humans are allergic to. Allergies generally come on quickly, like Zuzu's seems to have done, and the allergies usually seem to present at around four years old, which is her age right now."
"How are we going to be able to figure out what Zuzu's allergic to?" I asked. "I know that allergy testing in children can be really expensive..."
The vet administered the cortisone injection and got another syringe ready. "This is diphenhydramine, like Benadryl, to stop the allergic reaction," she murmured, and then continued, "The most common food items dogs are allergic to are corn, wheat and soy. If you're feeding her a common brand of dog food, I can tell you straight up that her food contains those items, which are commonly used as fillers to bulk up dry dog kibble. If you'd like, I can recommend a food that doesn't contain those three items, or you can do some research online, but the important thing is to get started on that
soon."
So I did. I went home and spent about ten hours researching dogs foods that do contain corn, wheat and soy and dog foods that don't contain corn, wheat and soy. I'll put my discoveries in a separate post, so let it suffice to say here that the food I decided to try was Blue Buffalo brand.
Usually, when you start a dog on a new food, you gradually add the new food into the old, increasing the ratio of new food to old over the course of a week or so. Since the food the dogs had been eating up to that day seemed to be killing one of them, it was a no-brainer to immediately take Zuzu completely off the old food and get started with the Blue Buffalo: the other two dogs finished up the rest of the bag of the other food because I hated for it to go to waste, but I ended up being so mad at the crap that food was made from, I fumed every time I measured it into their bowls. Zuzu unhappily swallowed a tiny pink Benadryl tablet every night before bed.
Within a week, Zuzu's scratching ended and she was back to being her bouncy, happy self. We've had a few little setbacks, such as the time she ate three pieces of popped popcorn off the kitchen floor where I carelessly dropped them. She scratched all night. Or the time when I made peanut butter treats for her without checking the label on the peanut butter jar: as it turns out, some brands of peanut butter contain high fructose CORN syrup, and Zuzu is really, really allergic to corn in any and every form.
The treats are why I started Dog Bites blog. All dogs love treats. Treats are handy for training, for rewarding, or, frankly, for bribing a recalcitrant dog to go to his crate or stand still to be brushed. Store bought treats can be very expensive, and my family just can't afford them. Fortunately, tempting tidbits for pups are easy to make in your own kitchen, out of simple-to-find ingredients. When I first mentioned on Facebook that I was making homemade yummies for our dogs, several people asked if I'd share my recipes and this will be the place to find them.
