08/06/2026
Not every nutrition journey goes exactly how we hope… and that’s okay 🐾
This is Odin.
Odin had always done reasonably well on his kibble diet, supplemented with fish. Recently he had a small flare up after being given a wet food, which prompted his family to come in for a chat.
After discussing his history, symptoms and goals, we decided the best thing to do was simplify his diet and gather some better information about what his body was actually agreeing with.
We started him on a single-protein raw beef diet.
Unfortunately, within hours we were met with the photos you can see above.
Now, was it definitely the beef? Could there have been another factor involved? Truthfully, we can’t say with 100% certainty.
But when you’re the owner and your dog has a reaction like this, the natural thing to do is stop the newest thing introduced.
So that’s exactly what we did.
Back onto his previous kibble and fish, and by the following morning Odin was already looking much calmer, less red, and far more comfortable within himself.
So why am I sharing this?
Because although this wasn’t the result we were hoping for, it was still incredibly valuable.
The wet food that originally triggered a flare up contained beef.
The raw trial contained beef.
The pattern is starting to become clearer.
This is one of the reasons I like simplifying diets when dealing with allergies and intolerances.
When a food contains 20, 30 or even 40 ingredients, how do we know which ingredient is actually causing the problem?
When we simplify things and use single proteins, we can stop guessing and start gathering real information.
The positive here isn’t that Odin reacted.
The positive is that Odin has taught us something.
And every bit of information gets us one step closer to finding the diet that makes him feel his best.
More to follow on this big boy’s journey 🐾
For now, we’re going to give Odin a week or so to relax, recover and let everything settle down.
After that, we’ll look at introducing a much simpler bird and lamb-based diet, as all the signs so far suggest these are proteins he agrees with far better.
Nutrition isn’t about being right first time.
It’s about listening to the dog, adjusting accordingly, and finding what works for the individual sitting in front of you ❤️
