The thought of a veterinary school never crossed my mind. I will surely look into that. Thank you Mariend and Sue for bringing that up. Wow mariend, the secretary at my vet office said that he could be allergic to a number of different things. I never thought sun light could be one of them! I bet that was shocking to you when you first found out about it. We live in an apartment building. They do use the fertilizer on their grass but they haven't for about 6 months now. We have only lived here for about a year though, so again Stanley would have been having his issues way before then. Lydia, I used to shampoo my carpets VERY frequently before we moved here. Now I never do it as I'm not sure if I am allowed to do it on my own. That was a good thought though. I have book marked the page that you put a link to. I will show it to DH. Thank you so much. Lisa, the vet just mentioned his ears the last time we were there. She said that they look great and she suggested that I continue with the drops twice a week for the rest of his life. So I will surely do that. And I am thinking that we are going to go ahead with the thyroid testing first. Hopefully they will find something then. That is what my vet is really pushing for. And then if nothing shows up from that I guess the only thing left to do then would be the allergy testing. I am very glad that i have posted this. Honestly at this point DH feels just really peeved with the vets. We have been to 2 now within the last 3 years. And like I said, the one said it was a bad habit. DH feels that an allergy test should have been discussed as an option from the very beginning with this 2nd vet once they told us it was allergies. I'm kinda confused as to why it wasn't mentioned before now as well. We didn't even know it was an option. I mean I knew that humans had them done but I'd never heard of it being done on a pet before. So here we are, now having spent well over $1,000 in vet bills alone and we have made absolutely no progress at all. We aren't rich by any means. Sorry for venting. Anyway, I think it has helped DH to see that we aren't the only ones that have had to deal with this. Thank you for sharing your own stories and thank you again for your ideas and thoughts.

This has been an ongoing thing with two of my cats for a few years now. Some animals suffer from actual food allergies but many simply have intolerance or sensitivity to certain foods. Either way you have to find and eliminate the cause. I would explain the situation to your vet and ask for his help in identifying the source and finding a food that your dog will eat. DonÂt start trying new foods left and right without asking the vet for possible side effects, reactions, etc. Problems are usually caused by something simple and very common in many pet food brands. But there are tons of foods that contain uncommon things like venison, lamb, turkey, potatoes, apples and combinations of foods your dog wonÂt react to. Here is a list to start of the most common offenders in dogs: beef, dairy products, chicken, wheat, chicken eggs, corn, and soy. I would find an independent pet store that carries high-end foods like Wellness. Look for brands that do not have any of the above in their ingredient list. Check online. Petsmart carries lamb and rice formulas that might work. Check out this link (one of many). You have to commit yourself and the dog to a long trial period to find the problem, eliminate the symptoms and make sure a new sensitivity does not occur with the new food. This might require a homemade diet for a while. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: Food allergies

I thought I'd add a comment even though it's been three months since the last update. I don't usually look at the TN gardening forum, but I'm not that far away in the SW corner of VA and I visit Oak Ridge from time to time (grew up there). I've been growing several paw paw cultivars for a while now and I agree with everything Brandon says except one. There are people who really don't like the taste. The negative comments have been "tastes like overripe banana" or something to that effect (it doesn't taste anything like banana to me). I have no personal experience with Integration Acres but have seen others comment positively about paw paws bought from them. Otherwise the best bet is to find a paw paw fan and let him/her give you a "certified" good one. Farmer's markets may be hit or miss. I got some good ones many years ago at one after asking around if anyone knew where I could buy some. No one was selling them, but one woman brought me some the next week. I've seen some sold at the farmer's market in Abingdon, VA but they were small and black--ones I'd throw away. Even at the paw paw festival in Winston-Salem, NC last August, one of the vendors was selling way over ripe paw paws and they would be a bad representation of how a good paw paw tastes. By the way, the UT arboretum in Oak Ridge has some paw paw trees that I saw fruit on several years ago but couldn't know if they were any good since it was too early. Most of the wild paw paws I've encountered are small, seedy and are of mediocre flavor or have some bitter aftertaste, but here and there you will find keepers. I should note that most of the commercially available cultivars are selections from the wild or at most one or two generations removed.

You could also look at solutions for the walls for noise deading. It wouldn't need to be fancy acoustic stuff, even tapestries or curtains will help. Depending on how sensitive I was (and you sound like you're very sensitive) I would even consider hanging blankets that I know I can tolerate on the walls. There are systems designed for displaying quilts and tapestries that would work fine for that application too. You could potentially create a lush, velvety, theatre look :) That would go a long way toward capturing those sound vibrations mid-air.