Full Diary Part 7

[Continued from Full Diary Part 6]

Stinging Nettle, the 2nd miracle food for a dog with kidney disease. It increased her appetite plus her sense of smell and adventure.

10-15-12 I have read online that stinging nettle is considered a miracle food for a dog with kidney disease as in their fresh green seed form they improve kidney function. Ordered Stinging Nettle Seeds [82] as I have read online a few studies (and there are only a limited few) that it helps remove toxins from the kidney and other benefits so I’ll sprinkle it on her treats, starting with a really TINY amount to see how she tolerates it and increase it until it’s more substantial – and I have read for kidney issues it must be nettle SEEDS, not leaf (contains phosphorous) or root.  And they can’t be a product like in the commercially-packaged seed packets found at garden centers, plant stores or nurseries.  I was so happy when I FINALLY stumbled across finding Andrea at the Healing Spirits Herb Farm website (see 82 above.) They were wonderful and she was able to tell me the seeds they would send were just harvested recently!  Exciting.  I had read that they are mechanically cold-milled by larger companies.  They were so tiny, light and fluffy I used them as is. You can see how TINY they are compared to this penny.  As for dosage, I read of a human who munches on nettle seeds and takes a pinch and chews them three times a day so my 2.4 lb baby shouldn’t need but a skant amount. Again, the research is limited but I read all of the articles referenced and it looks promising so I’ll start with it very slowly but the articles are very clear to proceed cautiously and consult a health care professional.   I repeat here now though, after all I have written, please remember everything I write here is just my personal experience and is NOT advice to be followed blindly as each pet is different. Always be very CAUTIOUS if trying something new like vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc – especially those pets on prescription medications as there could be reactions. There is never a “one size fits all” approach so you have to find out what works best for your pet.

I have also just read today in Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats that parsnips help to detoxify the kidneys, and advise combining raw grated parsnips with thick honey as a treat – made into balls and given as desired. Of course I’ll make it into finger food to let her eat it off my finger – and by that I mean she opens her mouth, and I slide it in and off onto her tongue, or cheek or roof of her mouth. Again, she’s snuggled on my lap and laps all the food off my finger and follows my finger when I go for more!

It is Oct. 16, 2012 now and I’m pretty happy with the variety of her diet but was concerned about the phosphorus level that she was getting, so taking the printouts of the food I am feeding entered the amount of phosphorus in each at the amount I was feeding into an Excel spread sheet and was able to assure myself I was in the appropriate range for her stage of kidney disease – early stage. I have a “Nutrition in Pnut’s food Excel chart and her phosphorus is at 42.195mg when her range is 21mg to 54mg at little over the middle point. But most of it is in a food that has more calcium than phosphorus so it should bind to the phosphorus and make what she is really getting much lower. I think the only food she is getting with more phosphorus than calcium is banana (and it is so high in calories and I want her to put weight back on so I feed it), but I add on top a generous amount of calcium carbonate with D3 to bind the phosphorus. And I have read that phosphorus binders like calcium carbonate must be given with food or immediately after so it will bind to the phosphorus in that particular food. I was thinking I would add some to her tripe, but the tripe has more calcium than phosphorus, and she is eating it so well since I stopped adding vitamins/minerals/herbs to it that I don’t want to interfere with that.  Since I took the vitamins/minerals/herbs out of her tripe and mix it only in her finger-fed am and pm treats of sweet potato/banana and pumpkin/pineapple (extra calcium+D3 in both especially with the banana,) and she eats the tripe so fast running eagerly to her bowl for her “breakfast” and “dinner” tripe meals.  And I’ve upped the amount too since tripe is well-balanced, calcium to phosphorus, and she needs the calories to put weight back on.

So now I am feeding 4 vegetables: Sweet Potato, Pumpkin, Cabbage, parsnips and three fruits: banana, pineapple, blueberry and main meat protein: tripe. I add honey to am and pm treats and the vitamins/minerals/herbs mentioned prior. So I am getting there.  But I’ve read that too much calcium is not good either so I’m going to back it down a just little as I have a tendency to over do a good thing and right now her calcium number is normal but phosphorus a little on the high end of normal at 5.0 and I want it down to 4.5 so I’ve taken a really close look at how much phosphorus she is getting and mango was a bit high vs calcium so I’ve removed that and I’ll just up the calcium only a little until after her next blood panel work early January.

I’m also generous with sprinkling on Vit C and I have read it and of itself is detoxifying in the body [86] And just today, 10/12/12 I’ve read I’m doing pretty much all that is correct to help her pancreas which seems to be sensitive and gets inflamed now and then because from the following by Dorsie Kovacs, DVM, of Monson Small Animal Clinic in Monson, Massachusetts, she confirms the positive things I’m doing by giving her 1. Green tripe, 2. Fresh vegetables  as from that article she says:  In addition, Dr. Kovacs says, “It is also important to introduce good gut flora (bacteria) by adding yogurt, green tripe, or supplements …... Good gut flora should continue to be maintained with supplements even after the inflamed or irritated pancreas has healed.” Dr. Kovacs has also noticed that some dogs with food allergies (especially dogs fed dry kibble) show rapid improvement when their diets are switched to raw or canned food. Raw meats contain natural enzymes, and fresh vegetables support the growth of good bacteria in the dog’s gut. [87] Down in the treatment area of that article it mentions offering raw pancreas and I do give her a very tiny amount of raw beef pancreas with every Sunday’s morning meal mixed with calcium/D3, Salmon oil since it is high in phosphorus and the calcium will act as a phosphorus binder and the salmon oil/D3 will offset its inflammatory effect.

After getting new wild Alaska Salmon Oil which seemed much stronger and only giving with am and afternoon treats, the dropper doled out smaller drops than before and after 60 days she was a little sore so started giving 3 drops instead of 2 at each treat feeding and started dusting the bottom of her tripe bowl for lunch and dinner with calcium/D3 and one drop of salmon oil so increased daily dosage by 4 drops and she’s doing MUCH better. No soreness again.

11-18-12:   Pnut has had some minor abdominal pain on and off recently and I feel it might be because I am feeding her too much at one sitting – mainly the finger-fed sweet potato/banana or pumpkin/mango treats (I added mango back, benefits seemed to outweigh the phosphorus). She’s still doing really well, but ANY pain, when it can be averted, is TOO much. But since she had lost all her weight gain at her last bloodwork early Oct. and was back down to 2.4 lbs from 2.8lbs and I reintroduced brie cheese because she did so much better before (still no cream cheese), I realize I’ve been subconsciously upping the amount I finger-feed her, and in fact, she has let me know she’s not interested in more when I still encourage to take a little more and just pretty much force it on her just to give her all that I have made, and I did cut back from earlier when I wrote I would give her too much too fast and then after she’d eat her lunch, she’d vomit it all.  And I know she leans toward discomfort from pancreatitis (her amylase was So…ooo high on the early Oct. reading and when I had formerly added butter – so bad for a pancreatic dog – she got extremely sore) and the way to heal after a pancreatic flare up is fasting, and then small meals more often so the pancreas doesn’t have to work so hard, and I totally lost sight of that fact in trying to get her weight back up.

So today, I finger-fed half the sweet potato treat around 10:15am (often as early as 9:45am – she gets up at 9:15am) and I’ll put down a bit less tripe for lunch around 1:30 pm (before this last bit of discomfort, she lapped up ALL of her tripe for 60 days straight, at least), then I’ll move forward her finger-fed parsnip/pineapple afternoon treat to about 2:30 pm from 5:30, again feeding half normal and then offer a half serving of finger-fed pumpkin/mango around 5:30. She gets her last tripe meal put down around 7:30 followed by her last treat before bed of finger-fed cabbage/blueberries which will have feedings 2 – 3 hours apart and a normal human takes 4 hours to digest so with these smaller meals I’d think 2 – 3 hours should be good. I really like having the last thing in her stomach being the cabbage which is good for ulcers and blueberries (3 to 2 ratio respectively) which are good for the pancreas. I don’t add any vitamins/minerals/herbs as I want the vegetable and fruit in her system pure.

I’m also going to reverse my opinion and give Glucosamine a try because she seems a little achy in her legs and joints and I’ve recently read conflicting opinions of what I’ve read before now reading:  Chitosan is derived from shellfish and is the major source of the nutritional supplement glucosamine. PDRHealth says, “In animal models of chronic renal failure, chitosan produced decreases in serum urea nitrogen, serum creatine and serum phosphate.” So I’ll introduce it very slowly, it is a combination of Glucosamine and Chondroitin and I haven’t read anything bad about Chondroitin.

Pnut got a bladder infection mid-November, it was so obvious with her trying to urinate on her wee-wee pad but producing only a drop of blood, which I only discovered after she spent a very restless night in bed and became more observant.   She sleeps under the covers between by legs (she is a burrower) so I KNOW when she is uneasy and something is bothering her.  But amoxy drops took care of that nicely and she is now better than ever. I should add, about 8 days into the two week regimen of the antibiotic it diminished her appetite so she would eat only a little tripe or sometimes not at all but since I am finger feeding her sweet potato/banana/brie at 9:24am, then parsnips/pineapple around 4pm (tripe breakfast would have been 1pm), followed by pumpkin/mango at 6:30 pm then cabbage/blueberries at 10pm (tripe dinner would have been 8:45pm) she was getting good nutrition. But one day after stopping the antibiotic, she was back to eating her tripe, and three days later she was glomming it down hungrily. So now she is putting on plenty of weight since she is back eating full breakfasts and dinners of generous raw tripe.

Bloodwork January 4 was AMAZING and her creatinine had dropped to an astonishing 1.2!  (This was a little over one year from diagnosis.)  It was such a big drop my vet started rationalizing to me that there can be unusual blips or glitches in blood work – to which I stopped her explanation immediately telling her those results were EXACTLY what I had been expecting because on Oct. 1 I started feeding her fresh nettle seeds two times a day, the sole objective to be to lower her creatinine. I followed up that conversation with an email to her citing the articles I had read that supported the use of nettle seeds titled: Nettle Seed as Adrenal Trophorestorative & Adaptogen and also a superb positive article on “Urtica semen reduces serum creatinine levels.”  Other online articles re-affirmed those findings. [89]

But the Jan bloodwork also showed that Pnut was a little on the anemic side and the vet asked me if I thought I could get more iron in her, but NOT more of the other vitamins, minerals and herbs because more of others would upset her stomach, so I looked for foods high in iron and settled on black strap (unnsulfured) molasses and started that 1/4/13.  But then later in January, she started having problems walking, she has luxating patella in both legs, and she became so bent and humped she could hardly walk.  I thought it was perhaps because of the cooler weather – sometimes in the 60’s – and read what I could do to help that and walking uphill was the best advice so I made sure she used her steps to get on the couch in our living room and den as much as possible but I felt so badly for her and I wondered how she could have deteriorated so fast?  Just couldn’t believe it and finally early February wondered if I had changed something that was having an adverse affect on her and thought of the molasses.  So to check, I stopped it and surprisingly, two days after stopping it she started to improve and a week later she was far improved – walking more, standing straighter, seeming more comfortable getting around and climbing her stairs up and down so much more easily.  By two weeks she was back to normal – like before I started the molasses in January.  So I had to realize, it didn’t suit her AT ALL and I knew it had a pretty high inflammatory index and also had more phosphorus to calcium, but I had upped her salmon oil by a couple of drops and increased the calcium I gave her to offset that, but obviously that wasn’t enough.[Continued Full Diary Part 8]