[Marjorie M]

I’m at my wit’s end! My 11 year old female dog was recently diagnosed with a struvite bladder stone (felt, not X-rayed). The vet told me 6 months on canned Hill’s s/d. Umm, that will cost over $1,000! And I’ve heard the food isn’t very good for dogs. Is there a more natural/holistic diet that I can put her on to dissolve the stone? Does Royal Canin SO dissolve the stone? (it’s a little cheaper than Hill’s). Assuming (praying!) the stone dissolves, do I need to keep her on a special diet the rest of her life or can I feed her a good quality food and add acidifiers(sp) like cranberry etc? I’m so overwhelmed! Anyone have better alternatives to dissolve the stone (and save money?!)? Thank you so much!

[anonymous]

Dietary restrictions, if any, will depend on the type of stones that the dog has.

Talk to your vet.

Best of luck.

[anonymous]

That’s a bargain! If it works………

First of all, an x-ray/ultra sound and other diagnostic tests are important to determine what type of bladder stones are present,
Dogs can have more than 1 kind, and some don’t dissolve
Surgery may be necessary. Diet is just a part of the treatment.
I would work very closely with your vet, prescription diet and all, for the best results

Please see my posts, example: /forums/topic/bladder-stones-in-6-year-old-female-pug/#post-113167
/forums/topic/bladder-stones-in-6-year-old-female-pug/#post-113166

Check the search engine for more

[Lori H]

Hi Marjorie,

My dog Buddy has been through a lot, much like your dog. He just turned 10 and during his life he has had surgery on his spleen, surgery for bladder stones, been diagnosed with Diabetes and I was told by my vet that he was suffering from liver failure and was preparing me for the fact that Buddy was going to die. The liver failure diagnosis was over a year ago and today, he is healthy, happy, looks amazing and has so much energy. I just had him into the vet for blood work Friday and his numbers are almost perfect! It has been am amazing turnaround so I know how you feel. I basically had to get him healthy myself. My vet did not support my decision to do what I did, but it does not matter, he is healthy and that is all that matters!

I now believe wholeheartedly that most vets know nothing about nutrition. They are told to carry a line of food in their offices by one of the large pharma/dog food companies because most of these companies go out and recruit at the vet universities across the United States when vets are in school and provide them with a kickback when the sell either Science Diet or Royal Canin in their clinics, up to 40%. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my vet, I just don’t believe he knows much of anything about nutrition. He has been great to me, my dog Buddy and my three cats. He is good at what he does, diagnose and perform much needed surgeries and procedures. He did Buddy’s bladder stone surgery which has complications.

I was at my wits end as well and thought that I was going to lose Buddy, but I was not willing to give up so I did a Google search and found an amazing person who brought Buddy back to the healthy dog he is.

Buddy is on a very special diet and he has made huge strides in the last 10+ months. He is a very healthy dog to what he was 6 months ago.

I worked with a man named Rick Scheyer. He has an amazing website http://www.doglivershunt.com He has helped many dogs with liver shunt, kidney disease, bladder stone problems and much, much more become healthy dogs again. I would suggest reaching out to him for a free consultation. It might be the answer you need.

If you choose to go with his program, it is not cheap, but I believe that over time, I will save money by not taking Buddy to the vet time and time again because I don’t know what is wrong and having a battery of tests run and racking up bills in the thousands, I have been there!

He was slowly weened off of his processed food Science Diet U/D and placed on a diet of fresh veggies and meat based on a very slow transition to follow with Rick’s help.

Buddy’s diet is a balance of ¾ veggies to ¼ meats. Dogs with liver issues do not need as much protein as you would expect. He gets lots of yellow veggies (squash, tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, celery, carrots, Brussel sprouts, snap peas, etc.) along with hemp oil and nori blended with goat yogurt into almost a smoothie consistency. I then add meats, liver is great as it helps to detoxify the liver (funny that you feed liver to a dog with liver issuesJ) and then he gets a variety of supplements. He receives three gut supplements in the morning (Acidophilus, Bifudus and a Spectrabiotic) along with an Enzyme and something called Whole Body. In the evenings he gets the Enzyme, Whole Body and a Mushroom supplement. The process to make his food is not that time consuming and if you are at your wits end like I was, I was ready to do anything.

He also gets to have as much goat yogurt as he wants with coconut oil. He also gets sweet potato chews and coconut slices.

He is also allowed to eat fruits, not during his morning and evening meals since they digest differently than veggies, but he has not yet warmed up to them yet. I don’t know if he ever will.

He is doing great! He has so much energy and the numbers don’t lie! I got a glucose meter and I am going to start checking his levels daily. I would really like to get him off the insulin if I can. I believe the medicine is what causes the blindness, not the actual diabetes, my vet believes otherwise.

My vet has not said much of anything. I explained I was taking him off the prescription food and putting him on this program and he never responded. When I took him in the last time for blood work, I think he was surprised Buddy was doing so well, but did not ask me further about what I was doing. He is a pretty straight and narrow vet and I don’t think he looks outside the box. If Buddy’s glucose numbers continue to decline, I will take him back and back off on the number of units he is given. Now it is just maintenance and keeping a spreadsheet and monitoring how he is doing.

I suggest reaching out. I think Rick saved Buddy’s life. I took him to the vet in October to have blood work done and he is perfectly healthy!

Let me know if I can be of anymore help.

Good luck on your search and reach out if you have further questions or concerns. It was hard to take the jump and trust someone other than my vet with my dogs nutritional health, but I am so glad that I did.

Lori

[Susan]

Hi Marjorie,
when I got my rescued dog that afternoon while he was doing a wee he was weeing blood, I quickly rung the rescue lady & she said contact our vet, the vet said we’ll do Ultra Scan while he’s being desexed on Monday, after he was desexed, the vet rung me & said he has Urinary Crystals probably from being used as a breeding dog he has caught an infection, I said what happens now? the vet said, he needs to be on a vet diet for 6 weeks & eat no other foods, no treats, nothing or the crystal wont dissolve properly, when I went to picked him up she gave me a cartoon of the Royal Canine S/O Urinary cans x 12 cans & a bag of the Royal Canine S/O Urinary dry kibble & said feed the dry R/C S/O kibble for breakfast & for dinner feed him 1/2 a can of the R/C S/O wet can food, then she said, I’m given him cartoon of the wet can food so he has variety just incase he wont eat the dry S/O kibble, then she booked him to come back in 7 weeks for another Ultra Scan to see if all his crystal had dissolved, 7 weeks later we went back to see vet, he had his Ultra Scan & no more crystals, they had all disovled, the vet said now put him back on normal food & thats when my nightmare started, Patch had IBD & while he was eating the Royal Canine S/O wet & dry food it was agreeing with him & he didnt have any reactions to ingredients…

The only thing about the Hills & Royal Canine vet diets for Urinary problems is the fat, it’s a bit high, so if your girl has Pancreatitis make sure you tell the vet about the higher fat in these vet diets, the fat in the wet can food is around 17-18% the dry kibble is 17%max
Not recommended for (contraindications):
Chronic renal failure, metabolic acidosis
Heart failure
Pancreatitis or history of pancreatitis
Hyperlipidaemia
In conjunction with the use of urine-acidifying drugs
Pregnancy
Lactation
Growth

Feeding a vet diet for 2 months will work out cheaper then if your girl gets a blockage & needs an operation, it will be more expensive, I dont think she needs to be on the Urinary vet diet for 6 months ?? Patches crystals all dissolved within 6 weeks & he had a lot of crystals, they look like big rock salts…

I ended up contacting a Naturopath Jaqueline Rudan for Patches IBD
Here’s a Acidifying Diet, Urinary Crystals Diet, it gives you an idea about ingredients to feed after her crystals have dissolved with the vet diet, its a raw diet but it can be cooked as long as there’s no cooked bone…
http://www.naturalanimalsolutions.com.au/Shop/2016/03/15/acidifying-diet-urinary-crystals/

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