The Doggone Thing

You've never smelled anything like this in your life.  Seriously.  I'm not going to elaborate any further than that- but, our first buy indie/local derailer may actually be the dog.

Meet Dewey.  He hates this picture of himself, but what do you do when an 8 year old is in charge of your wardrobe?

Dewey is some kind of lab/whippet/terrier/heinz 57 mix, with a smart, outgoing, and incredibly goofy personality.  He was a KY Humane Society dog, hand picked for my family by a friend who has an amazing talent of matching the perfect dog with its forever home.  He came into our lives when he was about four months old, and is now two and a half- which in dog years makes him an unruly teenager.    

When we first got our canine, we wanted to be the perfect rescue family.  We bought him top of the line dog food- not too many grains and fillers, mostly meat.  He snarfed it down with gusto.  Fast forward a few days...and Dewey started to have issues.  Really smelly 'No, honey, it really wasn't me!  IT WAS THE DOG!' issues.  Not only that, he was having trouble on his visits to the back yard.  So, we switched foods, which really only changed the scent slightly. Rinse, lather, rinse repeat- nothing worked.

Finally, out of sheer desperation, we picked up one we hadn't tried- Rachel Ray's Nutrish. Yes- Rachel Ray, exuberant cook and daytime talk show host queen, has a line of her own dog food.  Lo and behold, all doggie foulness stopped almost immediately- and the way Dewey ate the food, we could see that it was clearly 'delish!' (Incidentally, I ran into my friend Jessica at our local 4th of July on the 3rd of July celebration, and by some twist we got to talking about our dogs' digestive habits.  Kid you not, her dog had the exact. same. issue. Rachel Ray's Nutrish saved her too.)

So, for the past two years, Dewey has eaten Rachel Ray's, which you can only get at Kroger and Walmart.

Until this week, when we started our indie/local experiment, and ran out of dog food.  I ran over to Feeder's Supply and got some Earthborn Holistic dog food, which is also made in Evansville, IN.  Dewey LOVED it. His stomach so far does not.

We are back to the 'Dammit, I told you, it's the DOG!' times- and not so great trips to the backyard.

So potentially that brings us to our first of many inevitable buying dilemmas. When you have a creature dependent on you who clearly doesn't care WHERE you buy his food so long as his tummy is full and comfortable, is it that important to adhere to an economic experiment?  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no, it's not.  I think we're going to give him a day or two more on the Earthborn, (which really is a great company, and it's not their fault Dewey prefers vivacious brunettes' dog food lines!) and if it doesn't settle down, I'm going to head over to Kroger and pick up some Nutrish.  

Ah well.  It's all part of this yearlong conversation we're having.