Dang if I know! Good news is she's not acutely ill -- good energy, good appetite. It's just that over the past couple of weeks she's barfed three times for no apparent reason, and had several episodes of large, soft, mucousy poops. Both of these things are very unusual for her.

It could just be something's up with her food. Are you still feeding Rosie the Acana? I'm still giving Luna the Duck & Pear kibble, but her stool has never been as consistently perfect as it was before they added the U.S. manufacturing and switched up the American ingredients. Also, unfortunately my lovely Luna is the "mouth of the south" when it comes to grabbing bites of any conceivable garbage she can find while out on our walks .

So I really wasn't all that worried when I took her in, thinking it was food or garbage, but both the vet and I were a bit bothered that she's down from 65 to 61 pounds since the end of June. She has been getting a lot more exercise since Peg died, though, since I have more free time to take her on longer walks both morning and afternoon . Part of the extra worry about GI issues is because she has been consistently taking the NSAID for a while now. I stopped giving that the first time she threw up. But I think that's why the vet immediately wanted to draw blood yesterday in order to check on her liver and kidneys. So I should hear those results today, as well as the fecal. The snap test for giardia was negative, but I know that can be hard to diagnose and I do worry about that since they irrigate everything with lake water where we walk. I also worry about lepto because it's common among wildlife here. I have her vaccinated, but as we know, not all strains are covered.

In other news, this month marks a solid year that she has been lesion-free!! YAY! Still doing the Douxo shampoo, oral omegas, Allerderm spot-on, and that's the reason I've stuck with the duck food. Also, we did finally head in for an orthopedic consult late in the summer, and the specialist confirmed that her limp is originating in her right elbow. Without more involved imaging he can't be sure of the exact issue, but a leading candidate may be a bone chip that migrates around in the joint. He will be happy to perform an arthroscopic procedure on her any time we wish, but since the problem remains intermittent (and she hasn't been limping much at all ever since the consult), we haven't rushed her in to have that done.

So overall she had been doing really well before this GI stuff started. It just tugs at my heart cooking up her pots of chicken and rice. Peg had SOOO many GI issues through the years that I cannot begin to count the chicken/rice dinners I cooked for her. She always loved them, though, and would park herself right next to the stove as soon as she heard rice hitting the measuring cup. This week it has been little Lunie taking her place at my feet. I just don't want Lunie to be sick now, too. I'm just not ready for anything bad to be wrong. So I'm hoping it's just her food. It's a pain to start researching food again, but I'll take that job in a skinny minute rather than having something worse be wrong right now.