Kibbles and Bits

Last week, we were having major problems getting Indiana to eat.  Raw food, her main diet, was out.  Canned food, her usual safe go-to, was out.  I tried scrambled eggs.  I tried cooked turkey.  Nothing was working.  She wouldn't eat her pills either, not in cream cheese, not in liver sausage, not in canned cat food, not even in liver sausage dipped in canned cat food.  I was freaking out, a lot, to be honest. 

It's not that I was worried that Indiana was going to starve.  She didn't even seem like she felt sick, just that everything I offered wasn't quite what she wanted.  What I did worry about (because this latest round of food aversion was probably brought on my her last UTI and subsequent antibiotics) was that maybe this last backslide would be the one she wouldn't bounce back from.

Indiana has battled illness after illness with grace and strength, and she has recovered from all of them, more times than I can count.  Major illnesses, minor illnesses, this dog has fought them all, and won.  I know someday this will stop being the case.  As she ages, I know that each illness puts more stress on her body, and while we do everything we can to build a strong immune system for her, I know eventually, because she is a biological organism, that she won't be able to recover from something.  This is the way of life, and it totally sucks, and I live every day trying to delay that.  But I am aware of the realities.

So when Indy stopped eating last week, there was a small part of me that wondered, "What if?"  What if this was the one she couldn't recover from?  What if she was just going to stop eating and waste away to nothing?  I turned to my online pet friends via Facebook, who offered loads of support and advice, reminding me to take a step back, to take a deep breath, and just let her be.  Getting her to eat anything was, at some point, more important than getting her to eat the ideal diet.  So I turned to my last resort: kibble.

I keep some grain-free, human-grade kibble around, because my canine brother, Bill Wilson, visits often, and that's his favorite.  Indiana happens to like it too.  And while I'd rather a dog eat high-quality kibble than the large, commercial brand foods out there, I'm still not generally a big fan (it's less a quality issue than the fact that I prefer feeding whole foods).  But I was desperate, and I know that feeding kibble, especially temporarily, isn't going to hurt Indiana.  In fact, it had the potential to help her.  So I poured her a small bowl,  set it in front of her, and she inhaled it.  So I poured her more.  Gone.   And more.  Gone again.  So the next day, (because I believe in rotating foods as often as possible) I headed off to the store for samples of kibble, so see what other kinds she'd eat.  The answer?  All of them.  Some she likes better than others, but basically, I gave her samples of every grain-free food in the store, and they were all a-okay in her book. 

So yesterday I headed back to the store to buy actual bags of food.  My first time buying kibble for my own pets in almost 5 years.  I felt almost ashamed.  I work at this particular pet food store a few days a month, so I'm familiar with all of the food and frequently recommend favorite brands of kibble (even if I don't feed it, I still learn about the different brands and do, indeed, have favorites) to customers.  But I felt completely lost buying food for my own dog.  I'm comfortable around the raw foods and the canned foods.  Years of an aversion to the baked stuff has given me a complex, I guess. 

I headed right away to the food Indiana inhaled the fastest, a locally distributed food called "Born Free," a grain-free food manufactured by Fromm (on my list of faves).  But I still wanted more, so I headed to the one she ate second-fast, the most expensive foods in the store (of course, right?), Orijen and Acana.  (Also faves, though sometimes customers shy away from these because of the price)  After picking up a couple more samples, I was good to go.  And I felt, oddly, very free.  I had purchased kibble and survived. 

I'm still not generally a fan of kibble (I firmly believe that each pet owner should feed the highest quality food they can afford, and because I can afford raw, that is my preference), but I am a fan of Indiana.  And she's loving kibble right now.  She eats it up right away, as fast as she can.  She's excited, her bright eyes staring at me while she munches away at her (now beloved) food.  And that's what's important. She's getting all the nutrients she needs.  She loves it.  What more can I ask?
I hope eventually to be able to get her back onto canned food, and then, maybe, if I'm lucky, back on to raw.  Because Indy has kidney disease, and because kibble is baked and therefore very concentrated, it's still a food that is hard on her kidneys.  So I'd prefer not to keep her on it forever.  I do know, however, that she's calling the shots.  And if she wants to eat only kibble for the rest of her life, then that's okay with me.  I guess that makes me a fan of kibble.