Hi Tripawd Friends,

When we found out that Maggie had cancer I decided to kick her food up a notch in the healthy department.  Guiltily, I feel I should have been feeding her a more natural/less processed/less grain food all along, but no time for regrets here.  The issue we have been having is adjusting her diet to something healthy, maybe geared toward senior dogs, that she will eat and digest appropriately.  Pre-cancer/surgery/crap, she was eating Iams dry senior food (reluctantly) with Iams canned random chicken/beef on top.  After her biopsy surgery we did chicken and rice, ground beef and rice, etc. for a few days and then switched her to Science Diet dry and canned.  [Probably about equivalent in quality but I felt it was step in the right direction and hadn't had time to research all the uber healthy options.]  Then we had amputation surgery a couple weeks later and were back on chicken, ground beef, salmon, whatever we could get her to eat for 2 weeks.  She turned up her nose on the dry and canned  stuff we had been feeding.  I did some research and headed to a local pet shop for their advice, and came home with Canidae senior dry food and a variety of Merrick grain free cans.  She devoured both - for exactly a day and a half.  Now she will eat one variety of the canned chicken meal, but not with much enthusiasm. 

Maggie's been to the vet and doesn't appear to have any other issues that would affect her diet.  She has occasional diarrhea, which I can't really correlate with anything in her diet (but I know nerves/stress has a lot to do with it, so vet visits and rain storms are known causes).  The vet gave us a probiotic to put on her food and she's been taking that for 5 days, can't really tell any difference.  She had diarrhea once yesterday, but I blame a storm that stressed her out all night.  I also know that switching food brands and types 4 times in 2 months is not great - especially since we didn't do it gradually what with the surgery interruptions.  But I feel I have to keep trying something different until I find something that she loves to eat and that she can digest well.  She was 55 pounds before amp, then about 51 right after, and has lost another 4-5 pounds since then.  I know slim is good, but she's eating much less than she should be and I'm sure the tummy upsets aren't making her any happier.

I know food preferences can be totally random, but I would love any suggestions that folks here - especially those with picky eaters - are willing to share.  Thanks!!

Cindy and Maggie