i feel your pain. Is it that white stuff like dried up glue that will kill them if they eat it too long?

there is a recent thread about struvites, have you seen it?

 

Here it is:
http://dogfoodchat.com/forum/raw-feeding/11127-hello-another-raw-newbie-here.html

 

No, it's just kibble, but I still don't want to feed it to her. We bought the small bag, but we aren't opening it yet. We pretty much just bought it to get out of the office without a fight.

 

Oh my goodness I've done that. i bought a 20 pound sack of Science Diet for a 10 pound dog because "that's all we have in stock."

I ended up feeding it to the squirrels.

 

Solid Gold Berry Balance or cranberry pills
We had bladder stones over here and the science diet made her very ill and itchy.

 

Yes definitely NO NO NO NO NO to the c/d it's the worst of the worst! Zoey has always had alkaline urine. How long has your dog been on raw? Zoey has been eating raw for 16 months and no longer has issues with her urine, she's always had crystals in her urine. I do give Shellie cranberry capsules, but that is because she has a long history of pretty severe bladder infections (hmmmm......none though since switching to raw).

 

The prescription diet DRY actually helps to cause stones and infections because it causes dehydration (or something) and wont flush the bladder enough-urine(vet told me this).
On websites you will see that the dry is the worst thing you could buy if you do decide to do prescription bladder diet.

edited to add: We fed her prescription wet. One time we fed her a bowl of dry - next day she peed blood. Antibiotics
Next month gave her another bowl of dry - peed blood. Repeat a million times before I caught on

Dry is baaad news.

 

Eugh Science Diet, my vet always tries to push that stuff on me for my cats because they both have suffered with struvite crystals in the past. The things I have learned about struvites thus far is keep the bladder flushed by adding lots of moisture to the diet, and the proper urine pH ranging betwen 6-6.5, some people talk about mineral concentration too, but different vets say different things. And also some people suggest to stay away from any fish. One thing I did in the past to acidify the urine is cranberry pills, I got the capsules and broke them over the canned food. The capsules are better I think than the actual pills because the pills have extra ingredients that make it taste bitter while the capsule powder doesnt really have a taste imo. To stick with PMR you can always try sprinkling a capsule onto each meal to help acidify the urine. However, I dont know what the actual dose would be, Iv been told you cant really overdose on cranberry pills, but maybe someone on this forum would know the dosage further. I would definitley return the science diet though. If you need to put him on a vet diet to dissolve the crystals I would go for the Royal Canin Urinary S/O cans, they are designed to dissolve struvite crystals, and even though their ingredients arent amazing either, I would choose them over science diet any day. And RC has guaranteed pallability (sp?)

 

plus one of the ingredient is PINE TREE (sawdust). How nasty is that? It's like me going out to the park and eating the bark of a tree.

 

Not that I would recommend it to anyone today but bark bread have existed for ages and was in certain periods a staple in the diet. I don't know the science and reasoning behind adding pine fibers to this particular therapeutic diet but I highly doubt the fibers are harmful in any way.

 

What i have heard (not sure if this is true) is that cranberry will help keep the crystals from forming, but won't help dissolve them after they exist.

 

Whatttt, science diet has pine tree in their food, I never knew that, I always stop reading after all the by-products. And your vet only prescribed the dry food? Thats silly, that wont do anything to help dissolve the crystals, they need lots of water to help flush and dissolve the crystals.

 

Whatttt, science diet has pine tree in their food, I never knew that, I always stop reading after all the by-products. And your vet only prescribed the dry food? Thats silly, that wont to anything to help dissolve the crystals, they need lots of water to help flush and dissolve the crystals.

That's what i was thinking - the dog I had with bladder stones was on the canned stuff = she weighed 8 pounds and i put at least 2 cups of water in each time i fed her. That poor dog peed constantly. But it was clear!

 

I live in Canada, I think the ingredients for the american and canadian RC differ, I could be wrong, but Iv never seen pine in their ingredients list. Its made in a plant in Guelph, Ontario instead of being shipped from the USA. And I totally agree, my cats have been on the RC urinary s/o and preventive for about a year now, and I am just weaning them off of it now, I am a bit nervous about it cause I always get terrified they are going to get crystals again, my male had a blockage last september which he almost died from. But I have been contacting holistic pet food companies for a few weeks now and found one that has the proper pH levels and ingredients. Eventually, I hope to switch them to pre-made raw, and then to PMR.

 

Like you, I was terrified to take Noodles off the food even though it was making her weird and lethargic and just...not right. And bad gas!
I thought she'd get a stone within months - it's been 4 official months on raw and her bladder got better! Finally lol! I feel silly for being so scared about the change but now I understand it's just trial and error and raw really did help

 

I have no idea if this would help at all I would do my own research if it helps with crystals, but Teagan has incontinents I went the whole vet route and finally said screw you, but my herbalist suggested belladonna tables and they have worked wonders.

I go and see the herbalist again and I will ask if the belladonna wil help with crystals

 

The Canadian and American royal canin diets are different, on the American site the dry food doesnt even list chicken until like 5 ingredients in.

Noodlesmadison, yeah I was thinking of trying the premade raw from Natures Variety, because Iv heard that cats seem to respond to it quickly and can be switched cold turkey from kibble to it without them hating the taste. Just what has me a bit iffy is that vet diets, I think, are more addictive to cats because they add more things to make it ''taste better'' so the cats keep eating it. I just bought some holistic select cat food cans, and they eat them, but not as eagerly as the vet diet.

 

So what I'm getting from this is we need to add lots of water into her diet and maybe something like cranberry capsules to help balance her ph levels. How long should we do this before we get her urine tested again?

 

I would test maybe in 4-6 weeks as it is going to take some time to flush the crystals out of her system. Encourage her to drink lots of water. That will help. PMR will definitely help, it eliminated crystals in my dog who has had them practically her entire life no matter what, yes even on Royal Canin's Urinary SO prescription diet.

 

I got her urine tested a month after starting raw

 

It depends how bad the crystals were. It ranges anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months depending on the severity. My cat who got blocked, it was literally like sand in his bladder, when he got cathaterized, the crystals were at the bottom of the baggy like sand, it took 3 months to clear up. When my other cat had crystals they cleared up in a month. Yes, for sure extra water and cranberry capsules... since you caught it early she should be ok to be tested in a month. And I *think* that the acidity from the cranberry capsules could help to dissolve the crystals, but Im not 100% sure, vets always have different opinions on it too.

 

Check this out: http://preymodelraw.com/2010/12/02/when-is-prey-model-raw-not-ideal/

It's a blog post on Jon & Natalie's (jdatwood & DaneMama) PMR website that was researched & contributed by Sara (LuvMyBRT). Good stuff!

 

Thank you all so much for all the information! We were so worried about our girl earlier this evening, and we both feel so much better now! I love this forum!

 

Yeah, if I were you I would honestly just try to add cranberry capsules to each meal to help acidify her urine, because the acidity may be all that is needed to dissolve the crystals, and if you dont notice an improvement then I would do a vet prescription canned diet, no kibble, for a couple weeks to dissolve them. I dont know if this would work to help increase water intake, its just a thought, but could you dice up her meat and float it in cold water mixed with the cranberry capsule powder? Because it might make her lap up the water to get to the meat, Iv never tried that so I dont know if it would work though.

 

one thing I never noticed before I came here - alot of dog food has cellulose, which is also sawdust.

 

Oh my gosh, I never knew cellulose was saw dust!

 

Well, I knew it was paper but it just didn't compute when I saw it on a bag of dog food - I figured there was some kind of food cellulose, or something I didn't understand. I never imagined they would put that in dog food.

I learn alot from this place.

 

If you ever had Vanilla flavored anything, and it wasn't natural vanilla which is rare in the food industry, you've eaten tree, basically. You have eaten lignin, a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry.

 

So are you saying that makes it ok to put in dog food? Not sure I see the connection.

 

I don't think it's weird or gross - I think it's a cost saving filler. There's no other reason to include it than to cheap out.

 

Agree. However, in therapeutic foods there might be various reasons to use it for it's chemical properties or simply as a filler who doesn't alter the properties of the food.

 

There shouldn't BE fillers in food... period.

 

Our dogs eat trees all the time. Our woodpile for our fire pit has to be restocked all the time because the dogs have gotten into it and chewed up some of the branches.