My 4 month old husky female has had a bladder infection for the last
month. After several rounds of antibiotics the vet says her urine still
has bacteria in it, and that it is probably food related.

How can a bladder infection be food related?

What food should I be feeding her to avoid this problem?

She was introduced to Purina Pro Plan Puppy Chicken & Rice by her
breeder. The vet has recommended his own Medi-Cal Preventive Formula,
which is pretty expensive.

I know huskies have sensitive stomachs, so I'm nervous about changing
her diet back and forth. I'd like a recommendation for a dog food brand,
specifically one that might help with this bladder infection... if I
can hear what other people feed their huskies (she is not a working
dog) all the better.

Thanks;

Les

In article ,
evil monkey wrote:
My 4 month old husky female has had a bladder infection for the last
month. After several rounds of antibiotics the vet says her urine still
has bacteria in it, and that it is probably food related.

When you say "several rounds of antibiotics," do you mean
that she's been on different antibiotics, or more of the
same?

It sounds like your vet is guessing, which is fine to a
point and beyond that point it becomes pretty uncool if he's
not being methodical about diagnosis. Has he cultured her
urine and done a sensitivity test? If not, it sounds as if
the time has come for him to do that. If he's not prepared
to do a cystocentesis and do a culture sensitivity test, I'd
take your dog to a different vet.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

"[Social Security] will be bust in 10 years" -- George Bush, in 1978

I don't know if it's food related but here are the medi-cal dog food
ingredients

http://www.medi-cal.ca/consumers/Can...ge2_en.asp#Dry

You can get a better formula than that from one of these for around $1
per pound

www.naturapet.com

www.solidgoldhealth.com

www.omhpet.com

www.canidae.com

or even this one at your local Petsmart / Petco

http://www.nutroproducts.com/ncultradog.asp

The whole story is we our husky (Juno) needed to pee every two minutes
and aside from frequent urination there was also some blood. So we
brought her to an emergency vet hospital. That emergency vet gave us
Cephalexin Novo-Lexin. When that was finished Juno seemed to be feeling
better and was her usual happy self. She wasn't peeing all the time like
before. We then brought Juno to her usual vet for her shots and that vet
wouldn't give them because Juno had a fever. Apparently Juno still had
the infection so the vet gave us another medicine (Moxilean) and said to
come back in a week. 1 week later we went back and Juno still has
bacteria in her urine, we were prescribed a bigger dose of the same
pills, and were told the problem was probably food related and that we
should buy the special vet dogfood (Medi-Cal Preventive Formula).

At every visit they asked for a urine sample. I guessing that was the
culture part...

Les

Melinda Shore wrote:
In article ,
evil monkey wrote:

My 4 month old husky female has had a bladder infection for the last
month. After several rounds of antibiotics the vet says her urine still
has bacteria in it, and that it is probably food related.


When you say "several rounds of antibiotics," do you mean
that she's been on different antibiotics, or more of the
same?

It sounds like your vet is guessing, which is fine to a
point and beyond that point it becomes pretty uncool if he's
not being methodical about diagnosis. Has he cultured her
urine and done a sensitivity test? If not, it sounds as if
the time has come for him to do that. If he's not prepared
to do a cystocentesis and do a culture sensitivity test, I'd
take your dog to a different vet.

In article ,
Les Parsons wrote:
At every visit they asked for a urine sample. I guessing that was the
culture part...

It depends how they got it. To culture the urine and test
the bacteria for drug sensitivity they need a clean sample,
which is typically gotten by cystocentesis but some vets
will clip the hairs around the urethra and try to get some
untainted urine that way. If they're asking you to bring in
a urine sample, what you'd get by collecting it at home
would not be useful for sensitivity testing.

Does your vet give any reason for thinking that it's
food-related, or is it that he's unable to come up with
another explanation?

I'd talk to another vet, frankly. If you've got a
veterinary school nearby they can be annoying to deal with
but they will have state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment and
love hard problems.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

"[Social Security] will be bust in 10 years" -- George Bush, in 1978

wrote:
I don't know if it's food related but here are the medi-cal dog food
ingredients

http://www.medi-cal.ca/consumers/Can...ge2_en.asp#Dry

You can get a better formula than that from one of these for around $1
per pound

You know what, dude? If you don't know the relationship between diet and
urinary tract infections (and it's pretty obvious that you don't) then
you really ought to refrain from giving veterinary advice based on your
oh-so-impressive skills at reading dog food bags.

For what it's worth, my dog had a problem similar to the OP's. After
trying a number of different foods, the one that solved it for her has
as its first three ingredients corn grits, brewer's rice and chicken
by-product meal.

Dianne

evil monkey wrote:

How can a bladder infection be food related?

A dog's urine is normally supposed to be slightly on the acidic
side (pH from 6.4 to 6.6). If it is more alkaline than that,
a dog may be prone to frequent urinary tract infections and/or
the formation of bladder stones.

There are two things that a vet will look for to see if this
kind of problem is going on with a dog. One is to test the pH
itself to see if it is too alkaline. The other is to examine
the urine for the presence of "crystals" (clumps of minerals).
Either of these underlying issues may be predisposing your
dog towards having frequent urinary tract infections.

So you actually have a choice in how you deal with this - you
can wait until she gets an infection and treat it with antibiotics,
or you can be proactive and try to acidify her urine by changing
her diet.

The dog foods made by the large, reputable manufacturers have
been formulated to produce low urinary pH for most dogs and have
been tested on thousands of animals to make sure that they do
so. (This may or may not be true of foods marketed by smaller
companies.) However, just because a food produces ideal urinary
pH in MOST dogs it's been tested on, it doesn't mean that it
will work for every single dog. Furthermore, a diet that's too
high in minerals (magnesium, phosphorus, calcium) may predispose
a dog to forming crystals, or even worse, bladder stones - which
may require surgery to remove.

I went through an experience similar to yours. My female dog
was having frequent urinary tract infections. Her case was
particularly difficult to deal with because her infections were
asymptomatic - the only way to tell if she had one was to have
her tested regularly. In her case she had both risk factors for
frequent infections - her urine was WAY too alkaline (her pH
tested as high as 9 at one point) plus she had crystals as well.
She, my vet, and I went together through a frustrating period
of nearly a year of trying various foods in an effort to control
her urinary pH. There are several different prescription foods
formulated specifically to address alkaline urine, but none
of these worked for her; neither did any non-prescription diet
we tried. The food that ended up doing the trick for her is
ironically a prescription diet designed to treat a completely
different problem - it's Eukanuba Low Residue, which is usually
prescribed for dogs with intestinal problems.

She's been on the Eukanuba for around 6 years now and has had
no further urinary tract infections in that time.

So what I suspect from what you've written here is that the vet
saw either alkaline pH, crystals or both and is giving you an
option for treating those issues. As you probably figured out
already, personally I would much rather pay a little more for
a good food than I would for repeated courses of antibiotics or
(doG forbid) surgery.

It is of course quite possible that a non-prescription food
would successfully address what's going on with your dog, but
I would urge you to find a vet that you trust and that will
explain things to you while you figure out what's going on
with your dog. As in my case, you might have to try several
different foods and have her urine tested while she's on each
one in order to find a diet that works for her.

Good luck,

Dianne

Melinda Shore wrote:

(snipped)


How 'bout that GW Bush victory in Nov?? GLOAT|!

elegy wrote:
So you actually have a choice in how you deal with this - you
can wait until she gets an infection and treat it with antibiotics,
or you can be proactive and try to acidify her urine by changing
her diet.

or you can put the dog on a urine acidifier, which is what i ended up
doing. we tried the urinary diet and while it was effective at
lowering her ph, her coat looked like crap, her breath smelled like
crap, and her crap was squishy. no thanks.

Thanks for adding that - I'd forgotten that that was one of the
things we'd (unsuccessfully) tried with Patience.

Dianne

In article .com,
gaubster2 wrote:
How 'bout that GW Bush victory in Nov?? GLOAT|!

Did you see how the dollar dropped like a rock immediately
afterward? Every cloud has a silver lining, sometimes
almost literally.

One reason that I don't like Republicans is that they tend
to view politics as sports events, where winning and losing
is the question that they're trying to answer, rather than
the one of what's good for the country.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

The projected gap between Social Security revenues and expenditures is
smaller than the gap between non-Social Security revenues and expenditures