While working in pet nutrition, I hear a lot about people’s pets getting pancreatitis.
What is pancreatitis?
Pancreatitis is when the pancreas becomes inflamed and can result in abdominal pain and vomiting. There are two different types of pancreatitis, acute and chronic. In dogs, we see a lot more acute pancreatitis cases than chronic.
Pancreatitis can be caused by high fat diets, getting into the trash, or some breeds are more prone to pancreatitis.
The nutrition side of Pancreatitis:
A lot of vets will tell you not to feed your dogs table scraps, but that doesn’t mean not to feed them cooked human-grade food.
One of the best foods to feed while your pet has pancreatitis is a bland, low-fat diet. This is usually done by cooking chicken and rice. For people who are unable to cook their pet’s food, there are other options. Veterinarians will usually prescribe low fat diets during recovery and sometimes indefinitely.
Hills or Royal Canine Low GI Fat diets are the most common diets I have seen used for pancreatitis, but are those the healthiest options for your pets? Let's look at the ingredients of Royal Canine Low Gi Diet, you can see that the first ingredients are brewers rice, chicken by product meal, and barley. Within the first ingredients, you can tell that the diet is grain heavy and made of by products which can be chicken beaks or feet. Do you really want to be feeding a dog with pancreatitis chicken that is discarded from human food consumption? If it were my dog, I wouldn’t want to feed a high carb diet with food that isn’t well sourced.
Here's what I would recommend:
There are multiple different brands that create bland diets that, but the one that stands out to me most is My Perfect Pet. They have a couple of different options for your dog during recovery and even after!
KYLO'S STORY:
Kylo is a 13+yo yorkie who was recently adopted through Homebound Hounds. He has mild pancreatitis flares up every now and then. After learning about his frequent episodes, we decided to jump in and help!
My Perfect Pet was the first brand that jumped into my mind. They have multiple diets that could have been beneficial for Kylo, but the one we decided to try was the My Perfect Pet low fat cod.
Transitioning from a low-quality diet (Royal Canin) to a high-quality diet (My Perfect Pet) can be a juristic change for a dog with pancreatitis. When transitioning Kylo, we took a month to make sure we didn’t get any pancreatitis flare ups. This transition consists of slowly introducing new food into the old food.
For the first week of the transition, we started adding about 25% of the My Perfect Pet and 75% of the Royal Canin. Since Kylo wasn’t having any belly upsets, we decided to add more of the My Perfect Pet in. For the next week, Kylo was eating 50% of the My Perfect Pet and 50% of the Royal Canin. The third week of the transition, 75% of the portion was My Perfect Pet and 25% of the Royal Canin. Finally, we have made it to the fourth week and 100% of the food is the new diet!
Kylo has been on this diet for a month now and you can already notice the energy he has from a healthier diet.
If this was your pet, what diet would you choose?
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