Well, the crystals are back. We switched to California Naturals Low Fat since it had the right mineral profile, but I fell off the home-cooked wagon.
I'll get back on it asap, I guess. I was still adding a lot of water, but Robin hated it. She got where each food she didn't like, especially with added water, made her tuck tail and hide in the corner like the food was beating her.
I'm just so frustrated with the vets at this clinic. The one we saw yesterday is amazing with the cats and went so above and beyond with Bella, and the others were so great about Simon, that I have a hard time wanting to switch. I like the other 2 vets in the clinic better when it comes to dog stuff, and one of them is new, so I haven't yet sussed out how much he knows about nutrition... but the main vet and the vet we saw yesterday don't know much about it-- I need to start going on her day off...
I went back in the lab and looked at the slide. There were a couple of crystals that she had to really look for, so it's not like her urine was overrun. I said I thought that the crystals were generally a result of the infection, but she said it was the other way round... Then when I got home, I looked through the articles produced by University of Minnesota's College of Vet Medicine Urolithiasis Center (a whole center for pee problems!!!
) and they say that it IS almost always infection-induced and that sterile crystals are rare in dogs. I don't want to be a know-it-all with her, but part of me wants to take that article in and show her that I don't just read forums-- I have access to pubmed, I read all the clinical trial results that I can find. I'm not just a Google idiot. And that Center is funded by Hill's, so it'a also not crazy new age BS. I'm certainly no vet, so what do I know... and I'm sure that sometimes the crystals do cause an infection. But these were legit sources I was reading. It makes me worry that there's other developments in other areas that she's not keeping up with.
We're doing 2 weeks of antibiotics to clear up the infection... 2 weeks of Hill's SD canned to clear up the crystals (BTW, that sh*t is nasty-- like scooping crisco into her bowl) and I've added the Nutramax cranberry supplement. I'll probably switch to Berry Balance after that's gone... and I'm still considering Wysong's Biotic ph-. I stressed to the vet that I wanted the Rx food to be a last resort and that I was considering raw-- she of course didn't know anything about raw being helpful for urinary problems. BUt he RC has 14% protein and it's almost all corn-- I really worry about muscle wasting. Just since she's been on the foods in the very low 20%'s it seems like she's lost some mass.
Afterward, I'll probably find a food that Robin likes, decide on one or two supplements, and start adding cooked food again-- then maybe start making the switch to raw. I think I'll also see if one of the couple of holistic vets in the area (they're about 30 minutes away, a couple of towns over, but that's ok if I'm only using them for one animal) would do a nutritional consult with us. One is a homeopathic vet, and one is just more holistic-- sells Nature's Variety in the waiting room instead of Hills, that kind of thing. I know some of their patients who feed raw, so I'm finding out how much role those vets played in that decision.
After I saw a bag of chicken quarters for 55¢ per pound at Walmart, raw started looking even better. I need to just quick talking about it and do it.
Sigh.
"In these bodies, we will live; in these bodies we will die.
Where you invest your love, you invest your life." --Marcus Mumford
--Amalie