Kidney Friendly Diet

[spanky]

Hi All

After an ongoing saga... which is all my fault.... my male frenchie, Griffin, is potentially suffering from kidney damage.

He's currently at the vet on a drip in an attempt to bring his levels down so the vet can x-ray his bladder (for stones) and do an eye operation (what he initially went in for).

The vet has mentioned that Griffin will need to go onto a kidney diet to try and bring the levels down.... apparently it will need to be low protein.

At the moment both the dogs are on a raw diet and I'm taking a stab and guessing he won't be able to have red meat... so my question to everyone is:

What should I feed if I don't want to put him onto dry food? Is it ok for him to have a diet with no red meat? Does anyone else have experience with this kind of diet?

I know the vet will provide me with info tomorrow, but I think it will involve a dry food of some kind... so I'm just looking for a bit of extra info.

Thanks

Erin

[stormie]

If it's Hills, they do have a tinned prescription kidney diet. Maybe ask them if they have a home recipe if you want to make it yourself? If they don't have one, pm me and I'll dig ours up for you.

[Bully]

Hi Erin,

So sorry to hear about Griffin

I've Pm'd you Dr Ian Billinghurst's Kidney Diet.

There are a few kidney/renal disease lists on Yahoo that might be of help.

Hope that he's OK.

[Nekhbet]

There is the hills k/d which is about 12-14% protein and 16% fat

frankly if it is a matter of a dog getting renal failure I would be buying the commercial diet. If you are having problems the company offers advice to your vet for free. I wouldnt be making home made diets for renal dogs who are recently in trouble.

(I'm not a Hills pusher, in face I work for another company but I do believe in the best for a dog)

[spanky]

Thanks heaps.

We're not sure how bad it will be in the long run, but I'm trying to be prepared.

Just kicking myself about putting headache tablets in the bin... just didn't imagine they'd choose that day to go into it (never done it before) and now a month later the poor little guy is paying the price.

Will check out the BARF diet Bully... thanks so much.

[spanky]

There is the hills k/d which is about 12-14% protein and 16% fat

frankly if it is a matter of a dog getting renal failure I would be buying the commercial diet. If you are having problems the company offers advice to your vet for free. I wouldnt be making home made diets for renal dogs who are recently in trouble.

(I'm not a Hills pusher, in face I work for another company but I do believe in the best for a dog)

Completely agree, if it's best for him I'll put him on dry food.

Just that he gets a little more agro when he's on dry food (weird I know) and my female frenchie cops it.

Behaviourist is back from hols soon, so we'll work on that if we need too.

[Her Majesty Dogmad]

I had an elderly dog I rescued who turned out to have kidney problems. I put her on the Hills canned diet (she refused the dried food) and my vet said she may not be with me for long.

I took her to the Natural Vet at Russell Lea and they prescribed Chinese herbs. She remained in good health for a year until she caught a stomach bug and 2 weeks later she was gone. My vet was amazed at how well she did in that year, I'd give alternative therapies a look, I find they do wonders sometimes.

[Sheridan]

What sort of kidney disease? There are different sorts and could have a bearing on the type of diet.

Bear in mind re the Yahoo kidney-dog groups, that the Americans (in particular) are dead keen on supplements. I got lots of recommendations for supplements, many of which were not available here and which actually replaced good food. You need a low but good quality protein diet that's low in things like phosphorus. You'll need a binding agent and the K/D diet from Hills might work well. My dog wouldn't eat it but by then he was too far gone. Hope the drip works. It didn't for my dog but PLN is a very different disease to other kidney diseases. Bear in mind with the drip, your dog may become oedemic. If that's so, a Lasix injection may help. If the K/D doesn't work, take a look at the Ultra Z/D as the protein in it is hydrolised and will last longer in the system.

[Rusky]

when my old girl was diagnosed with renal failure I used royal canin walthams renal diet which is vet order kibble. I also found an informative website with recipes for making your own food . I wanted to make her food a little more interesting.

http://www.vetprof.com/clientinfo/KidneyDi...InDogs/diet.htm She liked the chicken and potato recipe, she always loved chicken.

[spanky]

It's not a kidney disease as such... about 5wks ago Griffin ate a decent amount of heron blue (ibeprofin) tablets that I had thrown in the bin and this appears to have resulted in damage to his kidneys. The vet is terming it as renal failure.

The vet has recommended the hills renal diet canned and dry food, but when I spoke to her about the raw options available she was quite happy for me to go down that path.

His creatine level (prior to the drip) was 254 and healthy range is 44-159. We're going to repeat the bloods in a month and see if the change of diet and clearing up the lingering bladder infection has improved the result.

My female frenchie sees a vet that specialises in acupuncture and herbal medicine, so I'll be giving her a call today to find out what she may be able to do for me with regards to supplements etc.

We're just really happy to have him home.

[Sheridan]

Sparky, what measurement was used for the creatinine? My dog's results came in mmol/L, where the range is 0.06-0.16. My dog's was 0.61 mmol/L. The US specialist said that his (various) levels were six times higher than any other dog she'd seen. :D The drip brought that down then?