Orijen Story

I can't remember when it first started, but sometime around 10 years ago, Bailey, our Pomeranian, lost most of her fur. It wasn't everything, but enough that I'd have to explain when people stopped to talk.

"What's with her fur?" they'd ask, pointing at Bailey, as if I might think they were referring to Wiff.

"Male-pattern baldness," I'd say. "Who knew it affected dogs?" I’d shrug and smile and walk away, never clarifying that Bailey was female, that male-pattern baldness doesn’t exist in dogs, or whether I was joking.

At the time, she was on a steady diet of Orijen kibble. It's marketed as premium and boasts "unmatched amounts of WholePrey animal ingredients." Their website says they help dogs "unlock their biological potential by feeding them as nature intended," which I assume means serving it in a Crate & Barrel bowl. I never asked whether she thought she was achieving all she was capable of, choosing instead to trust the marketing on the bag.

Orijen is a Canadian company, though a strong dollar does nothing for its street price. It's more expensive than most of the American stuff—presumably to keep all its employees in flannel—but I told myself she was worth it and, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Which, according to Orijen, was the "most nutrient-dense, succulent parts of the prey." Mmmm.

After she lost her fur, Wiff and I researched treatments. There was, of course, the option of going to Turkey for transplants, but we decided against it, given her age and general aversion to foreigners. Most of the literature painted a bleak picture of permanent fur loss from alopecia, but a few articles mentioned alternative remedies.

We tried giving her melatonin, but apart from the short-term excitement of getting a peanut-butter-flavored pill pocket every day, it just seemed to make her drowsy. Part of the fun of having a Pomeranian is its energy, and she just seemed high all the time. If we'd wanted that kind of animal in our home, we just would have gotten a stuffed one. Or adopted a teenager.

We turned into weirdos. Every morning we'd look at her backside to see if she sprouted any new fur. "Was that patch there yesterday?" one of us would ask, snapping a picture. "I could have sworn that was a bald spot before!" To the outside world, we looked like perverts. After months of no new growth, we gave up.

I don't know if it was based on a whim or a Reddit rabbit hole, but at one point we started cooking her food ourselves. We started with ground beef and turkey, which she tolerated. Then we added vegetables—broccoli, carrots, cauliflower—which she devoured. Soon, every morning we were frying up steaks or pork chops or sous viding chicken breast and supplementing with veggies from the table. We tried to accommodate her wine preferences, but they were too expensive. And then something strange happened. Her fur grew back.

But stranger still was that I ever found this surprising to begin with. Why was I shocked that her fur improved when we started feeding her food that looked like actual food? I started treating the symptoms before looking at the causes, trusting the marketing hype on a bag more than the evidence in front of me.

It also made me wonder where else I'm doing the same thing in my own life. Where else have I been dazzled by something marketed as premium? How often have I assumed that the expensive option was the better one? I'd like to think I'm too skeptical to be duped, but now I'm wondering: am I living up to my full biological potential?