Beef: It's what's for dinner

Rigby did great on his trial of turkey and yellow potatoes. He finished up his antibiotics 4 days ago and we aren't seeing any resurgence of inflammation so this morning I started his next protein trial: beef.

He still gets his turkey and potato mix for meals but now I am starting adding beef grind - a mix of muscle meat, organs, and bone - to the combo. Just a little at first while his body adjusts and if all goes well we will increase the beef and decrease the turkey.

Rigby now with clear skin and missing most of the weird brown staining on his front legs. All that is left seems to be his toe area. 

While his skin isn't 100% better, it is so much better than when we first started on this journey. His belly skin used to be crusty and thick with the look of elephant skin or something. It was wrinkly, hot, damp, and an angry pink colored rash around his groin area. He had hyperpigmentation in his belly spots too - a side effect of long term inflammation. At first I even thought it might be skin cancer because of how the spots were raised and not an even color - very weird, and not something that I had seen before.

It was tough to capture the coloring and texture of his skin with a camera but this was a photo from late February and the brownish red color of his skin went past his ankles, partly up his leg. 

Now his belly and groin are a normal healthy pink. The dampness and hyperpigmentation is gone, as are the crusty spots. There are still a few areas of thickened skin around his ankles  but for the most part people wouldn't know that he had skin issues. His coat is soft and shiny and he sheds less than my personal dogs do! I'm super happy that we've made so much progress.

He'll go back to the vet in a couple weeks to test his skin to make sure the bacterial infection is gone. Otherwise our plan will be to keep testing different foods so we can slowly grow the list of foods that we know he can safely eat as well as continuing his three times weekly baths.