Hills Prescription Diet

Due to a bout of pancreatitis Pereg is temporarily having Hills Prescription Diet i/d for Gastrointestinal Health. Since she got her appetite back and as she is raw fed I have just changed the meat in her meat and vegetable meal "wet" meal for the same quantity/weight of the Hills, and am giving her her usual bone meal in the evening which is usually chicken backs or carcasses [removing any fat first], or raw sardines or raw pilchards.

The problem is that within three or four hours of her "wet" meal she is demanding more food, so obviously the Hills is going through her system far quicker than her normal meat [poultry, not beef or lamb, or raw white fish]. Even the days when she has ½% fat soft cheese and a raw egg instead of meat keep her satiated until her evening meal.

If I give her more of the Hills than I do she ends up looking pregnant - I tried that and she yet she still demanded more food just three or four hours later, so I am wondering why this prescription diet food is any different to me just giving Pereg the low protein, low fat diet she already has with her usual raw food.

In fact looking at the list of ingredients in the Hills, I cannot see what is so special about it, and if the blood tests on Sunday show that her pancreatic amylase levels have dropped, I think I will just finish off the tins I have from my Vet, and go back to her regular food.

Has anyone any thoughts about this?

Would it be that she is so used to a high protein diet that the lack of Meat in the tinned food.??

Sorry Malka the phone rang and I lost concentration in that post. I mean that although it is filling her tummy up with food, a lot of the food in the science diet is not meat so it's not sustaining her for long xx

Zoe - I cut down all Pereg's food when I first put her on a weight-loss diet, and then cut down the protein and fat when she had a high BUN [kidney] level in October last year [that level is now perfect].

I usually bulk her first meal [maximum 50g meat] with lightly steamed vegetables and also with whole grains which I cook until soft. I would not give he processed grains but whole grains contain quite a bit of goodness without too many empty calories, so she is not used to a high protein diet and has been doing extremely well on it - and there is far more bone and cartilage than meat on a chicken carcass, plus I remove any skin and fat.

Ram thinks that the pancreas problem was probably caused by the seizure she had last Friday as it is far from unknown in epi dogs, and as she seems to have gotten over it fairly quickly I am not over worried - well I am still on edge and will be until I see the results of the blood tests on Sunday.

I just cannot see what on earth their is in the Hills Prescription Diet that she does not get from her regular supplements and vitamins - or that it really has enough lower fat and protein to make much difference to what she usually has.

You could try asking your vet to give you a bag of the dry I/d and supplement some of that with the tinned food and maybe that would fill her up a bit better.

Helen, I do not know whether they have the dry i/d food - my vet does not sell dog food, just has some of this prescription diet for when necessary. Luckily Pereg seems to have gotten over last weekend's really bad time and and hopefully it was a one-off situation. If it was/turns out to be an ongoing problem then we will have to think again, but I gave her some extra ½% soft cheese with her wet meal at around 1pm and she is only now, at 6.45pm, asking for her second meal.

The Hills seems to go straight through her. Her stools have been much larger and softer than normal, also extremely pongy. She has also been letting off very pongy farts - neither of which are normal for her on her raw food diet.

Just have to wait until Sunday for the next blood tests before making any decision to keep her on a special diet food, and I definitely do not like some of the ingredients in the Hills.

This is just my personal opinion on these 'prescription diets' I think they are full of fillers and are a sort of catchpenny for unsuspecting owners who get recommended them by their vets. I am sure Ram feels he is doing the right thing by prescribing them, but your own experience bears out my own personal feelings on them. You can't see they have anything in them that has anything different in them, and you do so much research into food for Pereg and you have a fairly extensive knowledge, so I would say your feeling about it is right, and I doubt I would ever put my dogs on one of these foods. Even when one of the puppies had been poorly I refused point blank to just feed her what they insisted she should have, I gave her some but also gradually fed her what my instincts told me I should feed her. How many people on here have said they have chucked the 'special food' given them to by their vets into the bin when they got home - a lot!!!!

June - I do not remember if you saw the photos I posted yesterday, taken yesterday morning. A totally different dog to the bloated, lethargic, almost unresponsive slug that Pereg was last weekend. And I do not think that I have the Hills to thank for the difference.

Ram is not anti raw feeding as long as it is meat/poultry and vegetables, and he agrees with me about whole grains. But oh is he still anti bones! He lectures me and I lecture him back, and he knows he will not win. But I am laying off the chicken wings and sticking to carcasses and backs for the moment. Minus skin and any fat.

It has now gone 10pm - she had her Hills plus vegetables with extra ½% soft cheese as her first meal, and then this evening three frozen raw sardines. And she has not asked for anything else - because she had the cheese with the Hills.

Do you know how much they say a dog her weight should have a day? Two 370g tins a day which is an excessive amount for a 16.6kg dog and most of which would go straight through her without giving her the nourishment she needs and which she gets from what I feed her and the vitamins and supplements that I give her.

Fair enough last weekend I was panicking. First the lost voice for most of the week, then the haematoma under her right front leg, hence the vet visit on Thursday, then the "slug" that was Pereg from Saturday morning.

Yes her liver function levels were raised but that was probably due to the GM she had on Friday afternoon. And yes her pancreatic Amylase levels were through the roof and she had all symptoms of pancreatitis. But that could have also been triggered by the GM seizure.

I have just been chatting on Skype again with a friend in the US from the epi List, about her epi's pancreatitis. She is also a raw feeder and reckons I am doing the right thing now. I mean I have not followed the instructions to stuff Pereg full with two large tins of the Hills - just substituted it weight for weight for the amount of meat she would have had in her first meal.

Her epi [a Pharoah Hound] had one bad attack and she nursed him through it without special food. I reckon I could easily have done the same but at least I only came away with eight cans of the prescription diet [it was all Ram had!].

Just have to get through tomorrow without Pereg having another seizure, then it will be back to the vet for a follow-up blood test.

I'm not convinced re the special diet foods either & I would resist giving my dogs anything that I don't know exactly what goes into it.

Raw meat isn't high protein as it contains around 20% protein depending on what the meat is. It is after all what dogs are"designed"to eat

Our Katie is on Hills Renal K/D diet & it definitely helps her - her blood tests testify to that

Harvey is on Hills D/D for his sensitivities & it has did wonders for him

Mindy gets Hills z/d & it alone is controlling most of her symptoms -again blood tests confirm validity of its useage.