Home receipe for a low mineral diet

Question
I have a Mini Schnauzer who had surgery to remove a bladder stone 9 months ago, she was then put on a CD diet.  Even at 1/3 a can a day, her weight has ballooned. My vet advised me there are good, home cooked recipes out there for a low mineral diet, but I have been unable to locate any.  Can you help?

Answer
Hi Rebecca,

I am getting so many questins here about uroliths I think I will put an article up on my site tohis weekend. Truly, I cannot advise on commercial diets for these conditions.  Dogs need specially formulated foods to help control stone formation and unfortunately only Hill's and Royal Canin have foods designed with these formulations in mind. I can develop a diet for you, using the same composition as Hill's does except it's a home made diet with better ingredients, but that's a professional service and many people are unwilling to pay for the diets. I strongly advise you not to look up a struvite diet on the Internet, the ones I am seeing are both inappropriate and generic. Your dog is an individual with specific needs as well as general ones - the diet YOU do best on might not work for your parents or partner, right?  I can help you with a consultation, most definitely. I can't print a generic recipe because it goes against my firmly held philosophy that diets should be developed with the whole dog in mind, not *just* the condition. I recently saw a struvite diet that uses tuna of all things, I would never feed tuna to a dog, much less all the time. And Miniature Schnauzers are prone to a host of conditions that require extra careful management.

In summary, I can offer three things:

1) I will be putting an article on uroliths on my site this weekend which draws upon the most current veterinary research we have as well as my extensive experience with these conditions and their responsiveness to dietary manipulation. While not a substitute for a personalized programme, it will help you understand the dietary demands of the condition, the difference between urates, struvites and oxalates, which foods to emphasize and which to avoid, the turth about Vitamin C and much more.

2) I can refer you to my yahoogroup, which features friendly and knowledegable discussion as well as many years now of archived articles on various topics, including uroliths
http:groups.yahoo.com/group/ThePossibleCanine-Nutrition

3) You can contact me for a personalized diet:
www.thepossiblecanine.com


In the meantime I would stick with the prescription diet over some of the generic home made diets I'm seeing out there, which in general are very worrisome.

All the best, Catherine