Hi Harper’s Mom,
I’ve never tried Merrick, bought some once and returned it after hearing about others who had problems with loose stool from the product. Sometimes when I first try a food, it’ll seem to be working fine for a while and then the symptoms slowly begin to develop over time. I tell you, the thing that helped me the most was this, having cataloged all of the foods in my stash by best buy date, I use them one at a time and take detailed notes of how things are going. I keep it all in a spreadsheet and it helped me identify my dog’s intolerances. Your pup may, or may not have an intolerance, but there’s no better time to begin keeping notes and saving the ingredient panel from the bag of food you were feeding (ingredients change so don’t rely on the being able to find the recipe online). You may find that suddenly a common ingredient pops up like how fish and fish oils are added to so many foods, even those that aren’t “fish-based,” but they also happen to be my dog’s intolerance.
I would look to switch your pup to a protein other than beef or duck and, like you mentioned, choose another brand for this round of your rotation.
Also, one other thing I just thought is this, I’ve never had luck with duck for either of my two dogs. Both of them developed loose stools after a period of time. I was using Back to Basics duck which contains a lot of organ meat and I wasn’t certain if the reaction was to the duck or the organ meat. I believe I tried duck again sometime later, but wasn’t keeping notes then or I could tell you for sure!
