Gawd, I love Saturday mornings.
Sleeping till I feel like getting up. Reading till I feel like doing something
else. Sipping on my coffee, not hurrying to eat breakfast, not getting out of
my housecoat so I can go to town. Sigh. Every morning
should be Saturday morning. Especially when the sun is shining into the windows
like it is today.
It’s just me and The Duck home.
He’s curled up on a fluffy blanket in a cosy corner beside my desk here. After two
rounds of antibiotics and antihistamines, during which he virtually stopped
scratching, he is back at it again. So we don’t know what the hell is going on.
It's probably going to require another ridiculously expensive trip to the vet
(an hour or two from here), which may not solve the problem any better than the
first trip did, right? Or so logic tells me, because whatever the vet could do
this second time, he sure as hell didn’t do the first time.
And why not? Let’s
assume it was to be a process of trial and error. Cut out the commercial dry food
Ducky had been eating, replace it with a super-expensive vet-recommended kind, and see if
that could’ve been the cause. Nope, apparently not. And it isn’t likely a
bacterial infection, or the second round of drugs should’ve knocked it out.
Could it be the egg that Scott
has begun to fry up for Ducky in an attempt to get him off one of the
commercial soft foods that has been a daily part of his diet? Maybe the company changed its recipe or something. Or was the egg thing begun
in response to the scratching? It’s been so long that I’m not sure of the
details. This has been going on since well before Christmas.
The dog is also getting quite a bit of fresh meat now, both raw and cooked.
The scratching may be driving Ducky crazy, and it is doing the same to Scott and me. When Ducky starts scratching during the night, I say in a totally normal tone of
voice, “Stop that.” He gets up and goes out to the living room to do his
scratching.
I swear, he understands English.
Also, Scott notes that if Ducky is lying with him on the couch, he doesn't scratch for hours. He seems completely content. Why would that be? Could the dog have developed a psychosomatic itch due to being alone too much lately?
Your ideas and intuitions are welcome.
Feeling badly for your pooch!Before I got to your almost last line about "psychosomatic itch", I wondered if it could possibly be stress related somehow...maybe along with dry, warm air in the house? Don't know, but hope Ducky is better soon, for his sake and all of your sake! Lori
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I know some humans whose skin itches due to stress, and then I have this intuition that the diet lacks the good fats and the dog or person should have some olive or fish oil. My sister with a dog makes her own dog food and swears by it: cooked ground turkey with veggies such as grated carrots and finely chopped potatoes. Good luck with the dear little dog.
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