27 Feb 2019

I have always been a cat person. 
It took me a couple of years of nagging before we had our first cat though.
Ok, maybe more then a couple of years. About 15 to be more exact. 
When my wife moved in with me she brought along her cat and
later on we got ourselves one more.
And then another one.
And yet another.

But when she (my wife) started to develope cat allergy we were forced to find
new homes for them. But we love animals and soon enough
there was a little staffy pup living in our house.

We bought him from a well renowned staffy breeder on breeder terms.
Which of course means that they had the rights to use him for
breeding for a limited number of years.
So they chose the most promising pup of the pack for us.

Lucky us, we thought, until the itching began.

Quite a common problem with this particular breed we got to learn.
He was licking his paws like crazy, scratching his belly, neck, ears.
So we went to the vet. They examined him, did tests,
but other then an ear infection they couldn’t come to any
conclusions to what was causing this.
So what now?
Experimenting with his food!

So he was put on a strict veterinary diet. A very expensive diet I must add.
After about 6 weeks there was no improvement what so ever.
New tests. Still nothing

The breeder recommended us to go see another veterinarian.
This one an expert on skin problems. New investigation, same procedure,
same expensive food, same result. Nothing.
So we decided to take him off this expensive hypoallergenic veterinary dog food
and began to try other brands, both cheap and expensive.
Still no improvement.

The interresting part is that during this period of testing all sorts of different
food we noticed that in almost  every pet store we asked what they
recommended they answered differently.  How is this possible?
I mean, either they should get an education in dog nutrition, or at least get to take a
crash course, or they should keep their mouths shut!

In the end I had to decide which of all the recommendations I were to put my trust in.
My choice fell on Standardt. This since two of the last people I spoke to gave
me a very convincing speech to which one of them also explained to me how
amazingly bad the protein in most of the big brands put in their food.

We’re two months in now with the new food. Haven’t noticed any real improvement though. I was told to give it at least 4 months so there’s still hope.

To sum it up, this is my advice to all of you:
Don’t Trust Anyone! You know your dog best!

Peace!

//PARANU