Our Journey to a Grain-Free Puppy Diet

There were always dogs, growing up. In a low-income household, dogs provided entertainment, comfort, and protection. Not exactly as luxury items and by that I mean it wasn’t a “spare no expense” household when it came to pets. More like, “they’ll have to be ok”. For the most part, they were. Basic maintenance and healthcare was ever all I’ve known when it came to dogs.

Not until now, with our pit/lab mix, have I learned how hair-pullingly frustrating it can be to have a dog with real needs.

Symptoms

Meet Val. As a three-month-old puppy we acquired through a PitBull Rescue group, she arrived with flaky skin. Pits have thin fur which lends a predilection for skin irritations. We started her on an oatmeal pet shampoo, put her on a high-quality puppy food, and thought it would eventually heal. Then the intermittent hives started. Then incessant scratching and licking. We tackled every symptom head-on, but nothing seemed to help. Itchy, flaky skin. The hives. Loss of fur on her rump, tail, and armpits. Then a massive sore on her lip. After months, she was in worse shape than she’d arrived in.

Pictured: A soon to be VERY itchy puppy!

Treatment

Finally, we tried everything, all at once, to its extreme. Dry skin / skin pH out of balance? Medicated baths three times a week, plus an egg with her breakfast and olive oil with her dinner. Fleas? The best flea collar, treated our entire house with flea spray, pulled up carpet, sprinkled DE outside. Hot spots? Organic skin balms (that she, unfortunately, liked to lick), switched to apple cider vinegar in a spray bottle with a spritz to her itchies every time we saw her scratching.

Was all of this successful? In part, yes. But she still seemed so very itchy. What else to do?

Grain-Free

I confess: I thought grain-free was a frou-frou way to upsell pet food to bourgies owners.

In our travail to find a true cure to Val’s ongoing skin issues, we’d gone through every condition Val might have: bacterial skin infection, acral lick dermatitis, flea bite dermatitis - anything that might explain her constant itchiness. The hives would come and go at odd times, leaving her skin dry, which aggravated the itchiness, which led to every other symptom.

Here’s the thing: we have chickens.

Chickens eat scratch, a medley of seeds and grains that we sprinkle on the ground for them in the evenings. Val loves scratch. She loves to eat anything, really - that’s the lab in her - but she was so very fond of a mouthful of grains. Invariably, later in the night, the hives would be back and the scratching would continue.

Let’s just say that it was the biggest lightbulb ever to go off.

Results

Val’s food was a problem, but the straight grain to the gut was a red flag that we didn’t see for far too long. Neither me nor my husband had ever had a dog with dietary issues; it just didn’t occur to us that the problem was the great food we’d been feeding her three times a day, every day.

Switching to grain-free food immediately put a stop to the source of her itching. Just like that. For weeks we managed the other symptoms until her skin healed completely and her fur grew back. Now, she’s a perfect, glossy black dog who still takes her breakfast with an egg on top, thank you very much.