Progress

I have refrained from posting about this for a while since I wanted to be sure we were on the right track. It's nothing too big, just an update on Conker's condition and eating habits.

For several months, Conker was not eating normally. He would outright refuse food he otherwise loved. I was not "allowed", due to financial restraints, to take him to the vet (unless something more serious showed up) so I was immensely stressed out about it for quite some time. That didn't help any at all, since I was quite easy to set off and I redirected my frustrations and fury onto other people.

This is not the first time Conker was too skinny for my liking. When he was 6-9 months old, right in the middle of his first major digestive crisis and for a while after, he was pretty dang lanky. His thick winter fur that grew in due to the cold and snow in St. Louis hid how skinny he really was.
Conker has always been tough to keep weight on. When he was on raw-foods only, he never went over 24 pounds. Granted, he was a ton more active then, but even if I upped his food, he did not gain weight. After I added in oatmeal, Conker's weight rose to about 24.5 pounds even though he maintained his very active lifestyle. The additional weight he put on, I will mention since I think it is significant, was not fat. It was all muscle.

This more recent bout of concern was not due to digestive issues. It's been a long long time since any of those have surfaced (excluding testing a singular food substance) but due to Conker not eating. He's had periods of refusing certain foodstuffs, but not entire meals, or anything that's offered to him. The longest he went without eating anything, not even what he "wanted" was 8 days. Excluding that ordeal, he was otherwise eating, but it was barely more than 2/3rds cup of kibble on "good" days.
Conker hit "bottom" right after the Bend trip, on which he ate nothing but chicken and beef jerky, and only a handful at best. He weighed just 23 pounds, which is a huge decrease in weight for such a small dog. His ribs, hips, and spine were very easily felt. I was really unnerved at this time.

Shortly after, Conker's appetite jump-started a bit. He would eat a cup of kibble with an egg mixed in, if I spread it out over two feedings a day. He slowly began to gain a bit of weight. All of a sudden, at the end of July, he decided his hunger strike was over and would eat whatever I offered him in almost any amount. He quickly packed on the pounds (a bit of fat, but mostly muscle) and now weighs 25 pounds! That's the most he has ever weighed. He still looks a bit skinny to me, but his ribs have a healthy covering of muscle on them, his spine is harder to feel, and his hips don't stick out like they did a couple months ago.

Conker now eats a "large" cup of kibble and an egg every day. Large as in about 1 1/3 cups. Not a huge amount, but this particular kibble has a ton of calories in it so I generally need to feed less of it anyways.
He has also eaten, quite enthusiastically I might add, several raw meals whenever the Girls get one. (With no digestive upsets!) He is back to eating anything I toss at him and looks forwards to meal times every day, harassing the Girls and making a ruckus as I prepare their food.
Which I've mentioned a million times already, but I need to get a video of it. It's hilarious.