Did you hear the one about the dog whose veterinarian prescribed a special therapeutic diet to slow the progression of kidney disease? Turns out that even with the newly prescribed food the rate of the dog’s decline did not ease up.
It wasn’t that the dog’s “dad” failed to feed the prescribed diet to the letter. He completely followed the doctor’s recommendations. It was that the man was also feeding his dog other foods, such as chicken breast and jerky treats, to encourage him to eat the therapeutic
meals. But that wasn’t revealed until the doctor took a detailed diet history.
Meat and meat-based treats are high in protein and phosphorus and can also be high in sodium; this combination of excess nutrients can contribute to worsening of kidney disease, especially as the illness moves into its later stages.
Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist® and Your Dog editorial board member Cailin Heinze, VMD, says that undercutting the benefit of a therapeutic diet with the wrong treats is by no means a rare thing. She talks about another scenario in which a dog was being fed a special elimination diet that was specifically designed to avoid common ingredients to see if one of them was causing the dog to have an allergic reaction. But the dog didn’t like the diet, so his family added other foods to it rather than talking to their veterinarian. That completely undercut the value of the food trial—and wasted the money that had been spent on the bag of special kibble.
There are also people who give high-sodium treats to dogs on a low-sodium diet to treat their heart disease and snacks with high amounts of oxalate to dogs who are supposed to follow a low-oxalate diet to help avoid the recurrence of urinary stones. The list of unintentional mistakes goes on and on. And it doesn’t take a lot of the wrong treat to negate the benefits of the therapeutic food—an important point when you consider that in one Tufts study, 60 percent of people reported wrapping their dog’s medicine in food so they would accept it more readily.
The bottom line: If your dog’s doctor prescribes a therapeutic diet to mitigate the effects of a particular disease, run your pet’s treats past her to make sure they won’t counteract the effects of the food.
