Bo Has Allergies

Bo has allergies. They could be due to food, they could be due to pollen, dust, grass, laminate flooring, who the heck knows what makes him scratch and chew little patches of fur in an attempt to look like a checkerboard. So far I have treated him with antihistamines, cortisone cream and sprays to make his fur taste like vinaigrette dressing. The Benadryl makes him resemble a Welcome-Mat and he just licks off the Bitter-Apple and cortisone.

My neighbor and his groomer thinks he needs special hypoallergenic dog food. This stuff costs about as much as flank steak. It has neat names like Origen, Pinnacle, Canedae and Avoderm. The ingredients read like a menu in a French Restaurant: rabbit, sweet potatoes, duck, trout, halibut, endives and pheasant.

My specialty dog food has always been what's featured at my favorite pet specialty store; Old-Roy from Wal-Mart. Occasionally I would get some other top seller that was on sale at Ag-Way. Simba had some digestive problems that would result in her vomiting up a crepe every other day. She would do this in our mud-room bathroom where it would cook unattended for about twelve hours till it looked like the third ingredient in Denny's "Grand Slam Breakfast." I tried a bag of the expensive dog food on her which only resulted the the same amount of crepes along with a hundred times more flatulence. It was so bad that if I was asleep on the couch and Simba was in her favorite spot right in front of me, one of her farts would wake me up. I don't mean the noise, I mean a smell that would put a three pack a day smoker into laryngospasm.

Now I know Simba was just a neurotic Rottweiler and Bo is an ancient noble breed from Wales. I feed the little prince Purina-One. To me that's a big step, it's the best Wal-Mart has to offer. I find comfort in that he only weighs 22 lbs. So now I am supposed to give him a three month try on some hypoallergenic port a faire that costs about a hundred dollars for a thirty pound bag. It would be cheaper to fry him a New York strip steak every night from Sam's Club. I can buy a popcorn sized bag of Benadryl for a hundred bucks. Even a quarterly I.M. shot of Kenalog (steroid) would only cost thirty dollars.

Well I'll try one bag of the hypoallergenic crap I can find at PetsMart. If that doesn't work he can turn into one big scab and carry a sign that says UNCLEAN. First, however, he has to finish up seventeen more pounds of Purina-One. After all, the odds of us discovering that one little allergen that makes him itch are about a hundred to one.