[butchpoodle]

I got my Brooke Lynn at 8 weeks and she's now 7 months. Since the beginning of our life together, she has been itchy - all over. Sometimes it's worse than others. She came to us eating Eukanuba - not a food I'm fond of, but I wanted her to settle in, so we didn't change it for a while.

After a few months, I changed her over to our regular diet here - a homemade mix of raw ground turkey, steel cut oats, carrots, green beans, spinach, blueberries, apples, bananas ... those are the usual ingredients and we make big batches and freeze it in quart bags. 3 of our 4 (including the pup) eat it.

I bought her a Merrick kibble - unfortunately, Grammy's Pot Pie, which is chicken based. She doesn't eat a lot of it, but always has it in her pen between meals since she's a growing pup.

I spoke to my groomer (aka dog guru) who suggested she was likely allergic to chicken. But we don't feed chicken - oh, except the kibble which she occasionally eats and those Dogswell chicken-wrapped-around-banana/apple/or sweet potato treats - she gets about four of those a day. Duh!! Chicken!! I do know better, but somehow this happened anyway.

So I've tossed the Merrick, stopped giving her the chicken treats (picked up some duck chews and some other treats that are single protein so we can see what works and what doesn't).

Meanwhile, she's seen my naturepath, who seems to indicate allergies to chicken and beef - and some intolerance to pretty much every meat/protein we tested her for. She's suggesting the turkey, fish, red meat are only okay 1 of 3 days. Arghhh!!

I'm going to have Dr Dodds' group do allergy testing with her blood and see what comes up. Meanwhile, my pup is getting pickier and pickier and I'm a little worried. I've never had a finicky eater despite years of small dogs, including another yorkie, who learned to eat competitively pretty quickly at my house!!

The itching has lessened with the absence of chicken, but it's still early to tell really. A couple of weeks. I want to wait 'til the chicken is out of her system before I replace the oats in our general mix with starchy veggies. Then I'll have to see what the blood tests say.

What else am I missing??