Why You Shouldn’t Feed Prescription Dog Food

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me reasons not to feed prescription dog food to Leroy I would be one rich chicka.

If I had a dime for every time that I didn’t release the wrath of Jenny Jugs on that person, I would be even richer.

I think that comment is one of the rudest things that you can say to a person that is feeding their dog a prescription food.

Here’s the thing about that:

Nobody who has their dog on prescription food WANTS to have their dog on prescription food.

I can only speak for myself, and probably a few other thousand other people, but many times a dog is on a prescription because they are very sick. Deathly ill in some cases. Their owners just spend thousands of dollars on their care and can’t go back to their regular diet because it might kill them. They are trying to manage their dog’s medical condition.

Seriously. That happens all the time. It happened to us.

If I would of taken Leroy home, fed the same food he was eating with his condition, he may have died.

In many cases a prescription food helps to stabilize a serious medical condition and then down the road, that prescription food may be able to be slowly eliminated.

That is not the case for us. I’ve tried to slowly take Leroy off of his prescription food and it doesn’t work.

REVELATION=OMG! The prescription diet is not killing my dog, it’s actually helping him have a good quality life.

When someone tells me to feed Leroy something, without knowing his medical history, it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me because most of the time it’s something that would send Leroy into an IBD downward spiral.

For instance, a few weeks after Leroy came home from the hospital I was in a group chat and someone told me that I was an awful pet owner for feeding my dog a prescription diet and that if I didn’t feed him a raw diet I would slowly be killing him.

Needless to say, I unleashed on that person. First I asked for their nutritional credentials and then I asked them if they knew of my dog’s medical history. No credentials and of course they didn’t know Leroy’s medical history.

“You just killed my dog with your “raw” diet packed to the max with protein.”

That person’s response. “A dog can’t have too much protein.”

My response, ” A dog that is leaking protein through his intestines can.”

Then there was crickets.

Asshat.

I see this happen all the time and it makes me cringe.

Now please don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with advice being given out when a complete medical history is known, when YOU ask for it, or when you’re in a specific group for specific medical conditions, it’s when it’s given out without that knowledge. I also have no issues with raw diets. Even though my dogs don’t eat a raw diet I still continue to learn and educate myself about them. There’s some great things that raw feeders do that I can do too and here’s the thing with that, I know my dogs. I know what might work for them and what probably won’t. (Heck. I’m even going to try and make bone broth this month.)

If you talk to most people who have a dog with IBD you’re going to hear “I feed this BUT every dog with IBD is different.”

That’s why there’s NO specific food for dogs with IBD. None. Zero. Zip.

You feed what works.

If you talk to someone who doesn’t have a dog with IBD you’re going to get a long list of foods that would make every owner with a dog with IBD cringe.

So there’s really only 2 valid reasons why you shouldn’t feed a prescription dog food to your dog:

1. They don’t need a prescription food

2. A prescription food isn’t working for their condition

Not because some asshat on the internet told you not too.

This post brought to you by a person who feeds her dog a prescription diet because she doesn’t want him to die and he’s not, he’s thriving.

p.s. A little secret that no one wants to know about: Veterinarians don’t make a killing off of selling prescription food. When I worked at the clinic we barely made any money off of prescription diets. Our cost was so low that even employees couldn’t get a discount. Why? Because we wanted your dog to recover safely and live. OMG. The horror.

 

 

 

Sharing is caring!