{"id":2335,"date":"2020-02-25T10:40:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T15:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/?p=2335"},"modified":"2025-10-24T19:43:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:43:52","slug":"reversing-hair-loss-for-a-legendary-pug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/reversing-hair-loss-for-a-legendary-pug\/","title":{"rendered":"Reversing Hair Loss For A Legendary Pug"},"content":{"rendered":"<?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><p>Taylor Percoski&rsquo;s pug, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/thatpuglegendchubbs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Legend Chubbs,<\/a> had a serious, ongoing hair loss problem, and was lacking energy&mdash;he simply wasn&rsquo;t feeling well. His situation was compounded by the fact that he wouldn&rsquo;t eat his own food. When Taylor started feeding Chubbs fresh food, his hair grew back in all its glory, and he couldn&rsquo;t wait to eat. Here&rsquo;s their story.<\/p><h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-legend-is-born\">A Legend is born<\/h4><p>Taylor Percoski got her pug, Legend Chubbs, as a present when she graduated college. She was living in California at the time, but Chubbs accompanied her on a move to Colorado, and then to New York, where they currently live.<\/p><h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-persistent-hair-loss-problem\">A persistent hair loss problem<\/h4><p>When Chubbs was a puppy, Taylor started feeding him a premium kibble brand. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I thought was good for him,&rdquo; she says. But soon after, her dog started to lose his hair. &ldquo;He started to get patches everywhere,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;We thought it was maybe an allergy to the grass in Colorado.&rdquo;<\/p><p>Taylor brought Chubbs to the vet and tried various treatments to address his hair loss. &ldquo;Everyone thought it was a staph infection,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Or they said it was an allergy. They put him on medicine and it didn&rsquo;t help at all.&rdquo; After two rounds of antibiotics, his condition didn&rsquo;t go away. &ldquo;It kept getting worse,&rdquo; Taylor says. &ldquo;He looked like a Dalmatian; he had so much hair loss.&rdquo;<\/p><h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-picky-and-tired\">Picky, and tired<\/h4><p>Taylor tried switching Chubbs from the chicken formula she was feeding to a commercial food with salmon. &ldquo;Someone told me he might be allergic to chicken, so I switched,&rdquo; she says. She said Chubbs&rsquo; hair loss slowed down but ultimately persisted. And there was another problem&mdash;he wouldn&rsquo;t eat. &ldquo;I had to sit on the ground to hand feed him morning and night,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I had to put cheese or cereal or something else on it to catch his attention.&rdquo; It was confounding because she says Chubbs wasn&rsquo;t a picky eater as a rule; he loved just about any &ldquo;regular&rdquo; food she gave him. &ldquo;He eats carrots, he eats peas; he&rsquo;ll eat anything,&rdquo; she says. And yet he wasn&rsquo;t eating his food, while pleading for the food that his humans were eating. &ldquo;I thought, I have to switch this; he&rsquo;s clearly hungry,&rdquo; she says.<\/p>Chubbs also just wasn&rsquo;t feeling well. He didn&rsquo;t have the energy typical of a puppy. In fact, he didn&rsquo;t have any energy. &ldquo;When you have a dog you just know if they&rsquo;re not feeling well,&rdquo; Taylor says. &ldquo;He was low on energy and he was a puppy. He was so lethargic. I just knew he did not feel good at all.&rdquo;<br>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Taylor-Chubbs.jpg\" alt=\"Taylor-Chubbs\"><h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-switch-to-fresh-food-more-hair-more-energy\">A switch to fresh food: more hair, more energy<\/h4><p>Taylor says that after within two months of eliminating chicken and processed food and feeding The Farmer&rsquo;s Dog, Chubbs had all his hair back. A year later, she says, &ldquo;he cannot get enough of his food. He&rsquo;ll run to where I put the plate down. It&rsquo;s so easy. I never have to add anything.&rdquo; Chubbs still has all his hair, and more. &ldquo;He has a lot more energy and definitely loves his food. He looks healthy. I know he feels healthy too.&rdquo;<\/p><p>There was one seeming downside&hellip; Chubbs was suddenly svelte. &ldquo;Everyone keeps telling me that his name doesn&rsquo;t match his body!&rdquo; Taylor says. &ldquo;Everyone says he&rsquo;s the most fit puppy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legend Chubbs the pug had a hair loss problem, and was lacking energy. With a switch to fresh food, his coat came back, along with his energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[418],"tags":[349,423,419],"class_list":["post-2335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-research","tag-conditions","tag-skin-coat","tag-success-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2335"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40791,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions\/40791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefarmersdog.com\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}