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Post by caz2golden on Mar 7, 2017 12:37:59 GMT
Just for info, generally found lamb tripe is lower fat than beef. Was reading article yesterday about vets and owners perception of dog food with regard to overweight dogs, made interesting reading if you read between the lines  petobesityprevention.org/2016-u-s-pet-obesity-statistics/ i.e its not just your vet who may not 100% recognize what is healthy vs not healthy ingredients in pet food. We all know pet food is a mine field! |
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Post by goldenlabbie on Mar 9, 2017 6:14:44 GMT
I'm sorry to hear about Alfie. I hope he would recover soon. Dogs are like humans. If ever we ever get diagnosed with a disease in the kidney, we are prescribed to take a certain diet. Similarly with dogs, I think it is better to follow the diet that your vet recommended. Gonna pray for your dog!  |
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Post by caz2golden on Mar 10, 2017 9:46:38 GMT
Goldenlabbie, please excuse me for being a little protective of a friend, but I think Barley is working very hard to find the right diet for her dog. The prescription diet the vet has suggested contains ingredients that might not suit her dog in the long term as he also has allergies. The advantage of the prescription foods is the labeling, they list all the analytical constituents (i.e they list phosphorous, sodium etc whereas most tins/trays/bags you find in local pet shop do not). Some suppliers if you contact them directly have further information about the contents of their foods, others do not. The downside of prescription food is the quality of the ingredients, often there is nothing particularly special about them! The other problem with prescription diets is they are far from cheap. This article might give you some idea about the quality of the ingredients that go into prescription foods. www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/articles/prescription-veterinary-diets.php By finding a low sodium and low phosphorous diet (with help from the nutritionist) Barley will be doing exactly what the vet is suggesting with the prescription food. |
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Post by scallywag on Mar 10, 2017 10:27:16 GMT
goldenlabbie The problem poor Alfie has is that not only is it his allergies and kidneys he's also got pancreas problems, so to treat one problem could cause problems for the other i.e fat content. barley is doing a grand job and I admire her dedication
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Post by barley on Mar 12, 2017 19:13:02 GMT
Thank you scallywag and caz2golden! goldenlabbie Unfortunately the exact diet my vet recommended just isn't suitable for Alfie. I am going to be feeding a diet that is based on the same kind of analysis but comprised of ingredients that Alfie can have. |
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Post by tonib on Mar 13, 2017 0:11:56 GMT
barley, I'm really sorry to hear of Alfie's kidney disease. I don't know if its the same for dogs as cats but when our Penny was diagnosed I found a really informative site for cats which does go into things like potassium & phosphorus levels etc. www.felinecrf.org/ Don't know if it will be of any use for you as I appreciate some things can be different for dogs but I suspect some principles will be the same. Initially our vet suggested not to try a renal diet as cats often don't find these palatable in the vets experience & its more important to ensure she eats well which is an interesting thought given your situation. Also to try & get her to have less dried & more wet food although that maybe by adding water to her kibble. We also had to try give Penny ACE inhibitor tablets (benazepri) to help with proteinuria & Ipakatine powder a supplement used to manage chronic kidney failure by reducing the absorption of phosphates. We did eventually move to renal food - but found that she wasn't a fan of the RC/Hills but did find some German ones from zooplus. I hope you can find the right diet & treatment regime for Alfie. Poor boy (& you) having so much to cope with over this last year.
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Post by barley on Mar 19, 2017 17:12:36 GMT
We're just going into week 2 of Alfie's home cooked diet and I've just cooked up the second batch. I am trying not to get my hopes up too much, but Alfie's symptoms have improved so much since stopping all dry foods - he's not once woken me up to go outside to pee at night and his drinking has returned back to a normal amount (infact I am encouraging him to drink some days as I worry he's not had enough!). I know that kidney disease cannot be cured but I am hoping we may see some improvement (or at least no deterioration) when it comes to retesting his blood in three weeks time. I went with Elmo's Kitchen who are a London-based canine nutritionist team to work the diet out for me - you send them copies of dogs urine & blood results and they work out a suitable diet plan based on your dogs results. I was scared of going it alone as it's such a minefield and I'm very glad I used them as I would have had no idea about all the different supplements, and definitely wouldn't have known that chicken breast and brown rice are no-gos! They're both too high in phosphorus so needs to be chicken leg meat and white rice I would have also continued giving him Yumove when in fact this is one of the worst things to give a dog with kidney disease! So it's definitely been money well spent. Currently in a week Alfie is getting 150g white rice, around 200g chicken leg meat, two eggs, one can of red salmon, 1kg sweet potatoes, two carrots, one pot of bio yoghurt, fresh parsley, one banana, one apple and then one of another kind of high antioxidant fruit.  I would have got totally lost on the supplement side of things. I now have a fully stocked canine pharmacy in my kitchen  ![]()  Rice is cooked until it's sticky & glue like, chicken roasted and chopped up with half the amount of skin, eggs hard boiled, salmon drained but skin & bones go in, sweet potatoes & carrots boiled, 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley, 1/4 cup dried seaweed, weekly supplements.  All the savoury stuff is mixed up together and then I use the yoghurt and fruit to make ''smoothie ice cubes'' which he gets as a bedtime snack. I mash the banana and other high antioxidant fruit (this week it was blueberries, used raspberries last week) up with the yoghurt and add two teaspoons of coconut oil, then freeze into an ice cube tray and he gets two a day.  He gets some slices of apple as his lunchtime snack along with one omega 3 oil capsule and one iMove joint supplement capsule. Once he's been on the diet a while, I can start to vary it up a little - swapping the chicken for tripe or cooked beef, using different veggies etc. He is allowed an unlimited quantity of fruit and cucumber (as much as he wants without getting an upset stomach) as these are very low phosphorus and high moisture. I know it's probably not a wonderful diet, had he of been a healthy dog, as it's relatively low in meat, but I'm just really happy it suits his dietary needs and gets us away from the vile Hills k/d stuff! It is most definitely a labour of love however, he really better appreciate it.... I gave myself a blister chopping the sweet potatoes    He is (obviously) still on his medication from the vet which is a tablet that works to reduce protein in the urine and a liquid supplement type thing called Pronefra which helps to reduce the absorption of phosphorous. He's still getting his two little Lily's Kitchen cheese & apple biscuits at bedtime as I would never heard the end of it if not! The vet doesn't know I'm not feeding Hills k/d as I don't think he would be best pleased! I will wait and see if there is any change in the blood results before deciding to admit or not |
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Post by cazypops on Mar 19, 2017 17:44:45 GMT
Well done on all your hard work, I hope he likes it. Our Jasper is very fussy and flatly refuses to eat if he doesn't like what I give him.  |
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Post by barley on Mar 19, 2017 18:02:25 GMT
Well done on all your hard work, I hope he likes it. Our Jasper is very fussy and flatly refuses to eat if he doesn't like what I give him. That's where I'm very lucky, Alfie loves everything - this included! |
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Post by caz2golden on Mar 19, 2017 18:41:48 GMT
So glad to hear Alfie is not having to get you up at night and that his drinking is more controlled. Is it worth buying a parsley plant and put in window sill? Though it probably would not cover all your parsley needs it might in long term work out to be cost effective I think you are doing great Looks fabulous food to me, Alfie is lucky to have you. I hope the bloods do show that the diet is helping. I can not see why vet would not approve, you have gone about it correctly by getting nutritionists advice. You can explain that the tins are not suitable in Alfies specific case as it was causing him to become itchy. |
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Post by alfiemummy on Mar 19, 2017 19:05:16 GMT
Did you ever hear back from the other nutritionist in the end barley? |
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Post by barley on Mar 19, 2017 20:30:29 GMT
So glad to hear Alfie is not having to get you up at night and that his drinking is more controlled. Is it worth buying a parsley plant and put in window sill? Though it probably would not cover all your parsley needs it might in long term work out to be cost effective I think you are doing great Looks fabulous food to me, Alfie is lucky to have you. I hope the bloods do show that the diet is helping. I can not see why vet would not approve, you have gone about it correctly by getting nutritionists advice. You can explain that the tins are not suitable in Alfies specific case as it was causing him to become itchy. Me keep a plant alive? Come on now, I think you're expecting a bit much No it's actually a good idea! They had them in Sainsburys so definitely worth getting one I am just worried that if the bloods aren't good, and vet knows I've not been feeding a prescription diet, he will think I am not making an effort to help him.  Did you ever hear back from the other nutritionist in the end barley ? I did, eventually. They hadn't replied to my email after about four days so I messaged them on facebook, it was read but they didn't reply. I finally got a reply to my email about another three days later! I got to use my Dorwest pill grinder today, yay I don't know if you remember from when you came to mine, but my kitchen window is round at the side near the entrance to the flats and there's a little grassy area there. Anyway my upstairs neighbour often comes down and stands there for a smoke - I don't have a net curtain at my kitchen window so you can see right in. This afternoon, there was I, in my kitchen, concentrating hard on emptying capsules of every last bit of powder, and grinding up a cocktail of tablets. I look up and of course my neighbour was there laughing to himself I had the window open a little to cool down the batch of sweet potato so I explained what I was doing... he said he'll believe me but millions wouldn't |
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Post by alfiemummy on Mar 19, 2017 20:52:34 GMT
You definitely went with the right one then if it took them that long to reply!
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Post by cazypops on Mar 20, 2017 20:41:51 GMT
To save getting any more blisters maybe you could ask for a food processor for you birthday. When do you go for the next lot of blood tests? |
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Post by barley on Mar 20, 2017 21:19:54 GMT
I think I definitely need to get one cazypops bloods in three weeks, already nervous lol! |
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