Things I've Learned From My Dog: Listen!

We had a brief (and actually very minor, in the grand scheme of things) scare with Indiana this week; she stopped eating!

She's done this before, about two years ago. It's scary every time, given her history. My mind goes terrible places at first. Oh, God, why isn't she eating? Is she sick? Is it the cancer? It's the cancer, isn't it? How will I ever be able to deal with it? I can't go through this again. Why is this happening? Why? Then I take a deep breath and tell myself to shut up! For heaven's sake.

Turns out, Indiana, who isn't a picky eater, is a picky eater. The first time, she was turning her nose up at her food because we were trying to sneak pills into it. So out went the pills, and in came a new brand of food. We thought this round of food-snubbery was related to a new pill she's taking--a bit of stomach upset?--and fed her canned pumpkin that night to settle her stomach. The next day, she was still turning her nose up at the food, but she was acting completely normal. Hmmm. "Let's give her some of the cats' raw food," I thought to myself. "Let's experiment here." Sure enough, she ate that raw food like it was going out of style. Hallelujah!

We're still feeding Isis the homemade raw food, but Indiana is eating a locally-made raw food, Nature's Quest. Jim feels bad about this switch, because we were obviously feeding homemade because we felt it was the healthiest thing for our pets. I don't feel so bad about it though. It's not like we're going from raw to kibble. We're still talking about a high-quality, fresh diet, made by a company I trust (I've met one of the owners and traded emails with the other--they started feeding raw to their pets for the same reasons we did, only they decided to make a living out of it!).

For whatever reason, Indiana is done with the homemade food for the timebeing. She made that abundantly clear. We'll give her some time off and try the homemade food again. But it has gotten me to thinking. Even though we give our girls a good rotation of meat--a different source(chicken, turkey, lamb, or buffalo) every 5 meals and a different mix of fresh veggies and fruit every batch--it wasn't enough variety for Indiana. Maybe going back to the homemade isn't the right way to go. Maybe a rotation of different meats and different brands of commercial raw foods is right for her. It's so hard to know.

But what I do know is to listen to Indiana. She's pretty clear about what she wants, and why shouldn't I trust that?