non-allergenic diets for dogs

It's been complicated living with Penny lately. Not only are we dealing with intermittent lameness due to her injured cruciate ligament and consequent recovery from surgery, but she's also been very much bothered by skin irritation.

Even though we generally adhere to a raw diet, we took our vet's advice to try a totally non-allergenic diet, a Hill's food called z/d. We just hate feeding her this, but have strictly stuck to it for five weeks now. (The vet wanted us to try at least six weeks, and friends have told us that's standard for giving allergens time to get out of a dog's system.)

One of the problems has been that Penny doesn't like the food all that much. She eats it, but looks longingly at what we eat.

Also, I haven't felt like using it as rewards, as it has no great value to her. So that's been another problem with her deterioration in walking nicely on lead and generally behaving well. As Honey's human often reminds us, it's necessary to keep training right through a dog's life.

But...

after all this time following the diet, I went to the vet to buy another bag of it last Friday, only to be told there's a supply problem and it's not available. I must say, I wasn't impressed, and went to other clinics to try to buy some. Eventually, having contacted eight clinics, I acknowledged that it didn't seem likely we could continue the therapeutic diet.

My own vet clinic had canned food, though - Hills' z/d cans. Lots of them. So I bought them, feeling as if we were sliding down the slippery slope to tooth problems and unhealthy diet.

The vet nurse told me it's possible to slice the canned food very thin and bake it in the oven, thus turning it into dry treats.

And Penny loves them!! Da da! Training begins again.

And, to top it off, the manager of our vet's other clinic had had the forethought to stock up on this food when she heard there were supply problems.

So, we're going to stick to the program for another few weeks and hope Penny's skin problems clear up.