Blossom’s Angels

Blossom, dear Blossom. Awesome Blossom. Lotus Blossom. That’s her full name, you know. Lotus Blossom. She IS a Chinese dog you know. My much maligned, much beloved dog. Hers is not a happy skin to be in.

She has, once again, taken to eating herself. Cannibals eat others of their same species… but what’s the word for an animal that eats itself? Besides “dim-witted” I mean. This is the worst episode of self-consumption I’ve ever seen. It’s ugly. It’s worse than ugly, it’s frightening looking and disgusting. She’s chewed big holes in her skin….and she smells like a moldy wet dog ALL the time. I’ll spare you the dubious pleasure of a more graphic description.

She has some sort of allergy that is causing the volcanic cesspool skin eruptions. It is a food allergy. I’ve struggled with keeping it under control for years and have been mostly more successful than not…until we moved here. There is a food that is wonderful for her – made by Bil Jac. It’s a frozen food – looks sort of like hamburger. Sort of. As long as she eats that, she’s fine. But change her diet….and it’s trouble with a capital T.

No problem, you say. Just feed her the dang food! Hah! Just shows what YOU know!! You can’t buy that particular food here in Florida. You see, there is only one Bil Jac distributor and they don’t use refrigerated trucks. So………no transporting of frozen foods into the rather warm weather here. I have been doing some research with some help from my friends….(Hey, Hey TOO) and making other changes in her diet. But it takes time for her to react – gotta clear all the bad things from her system and give the good things a chance to work. She’s taking more vitamins and supplements than most humans I know. And if I mix up one more raw liver and sardine casserole….. I cannot be held responsible for my behavior.

While waiting for the diet changes to take effect, the poor dog continues to eat herself. She doesn’t understand she’s getting better. I wanted to get her something to put on her externally to help soothe the itchiness in the mean time. It’s difficult because the itch and pain are actually internal, but the only thing she CAN do is scratch and chew at her skin which doesn’t help at all. The only thing I’ve been able to find is a cortisone spray – which has absolutely no effect. Not only that, but when the overspray gets on the floor, it makes it slicker than stepping on ball bearings! (Don’t ask me how I know what it’s like to step on a pile of ball bearings, OK?)

As a last result Sis and I trotted off to the local health food store. They also have a lot of homeopathic remedies for lots of conditions so I was hoping to find something to help poor Blossom out. We found a nice man (read “young man with rippling muscles AND long hair”) and asked if they had any homeopathic remedies for pets. He took us over to the shelf where there were several. There was a space for an itchy skin remedy…but no itchy skin remedy. The nice (rippling muscled) young man checked – and said it was on reorder and would be in stock on Friday. Dang.

I went over to the books and picked up one about animals. I found another suggested remedy for itchy skin…so I rounded up Mr. Long Hair Rippling Muscles and asked if they had that. They did – in a tablet that has to be held under the tongue until it dissolves. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out exactly how I was going to explain that method of self-medicating to Blossom. Wait – there was another form that you could dissolve in water and then drink….Right. You’ve all heard the saying that “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”?? Same principle with dogs. I sighed again and we gave up the ghost until Friday.

Sis had picked out some non-wheat bread and some pears that we went to pay for. As I’m standing in line behind Sis, Mr. Long Hair Rippling Muscles came up behind me. Was I about to get lucky???? Turns out, I wasn’t , but Blossom was. In his hand he had a bottle which he held out to me. I looked at it and it was a remedy for itching skin specifically for animals. I looked at him and his face was a big question mark. He spilled his guts. Seems he was restocking the shelves and rooting around in the cabinet for the right products to put out when he came across this bottle……..of a product they do not carry in the store. In fact, they have never carried it in the store. It’s a line of products for which they only carry the people remedies, not the animal ones. It wasn’t in the computer and he had to go find a price…but there it was.

Darling Blossom has some pretty cool angels. They dug up that bottle and made sure we got it. And I have been using it for two days…and she is scratching less, bleeding less, twitching less.

You know, I have been asking MY angels for some pretty clear signs – something that I cannot mistake – something very “black and white”. So far, either they’re not answering or I’m not getting it……….but BLOSSOM, on the other hand – is doing just fine!