Boris’ magic kidney food

When we initially took Boris home from the vet, they prescribed Hills (Science Diet) Kidney Diet food to help remove the load from his kidneys. Being a pet food snob, I obviously read up on it and found that it’s total shit. Really. It’s terrible food. By the way, this is also a mostly sober rant about pet food ingredients. This is the rant I pulled off facebook regarding why I don’t like the food that the vet (who likely went to a school sponsored by Hills, most of them are) prescribed.

They use the cheapest shit they can pack into it, corn products which are not only problematic for nearly all dogs, but cheap fillers, instead of using whole grains. Sugars, chemically derived vitamins instead of putting in whole fruits and vegetables to give the dog the nutrition, and in the dried food, brewers rice is either #1 or #2 on the ingredients list. Brewers rice is a byproduct of the macro brewing industry where all of the nutrients and pretty much anything useful is extracted from the rice making it a very cheap and very useless filler that serves to fill up the dog for a short time, allows the dog food company to trick you into thinking you’re giving your dog plenty of nutrients, and creates more poop.

Boris’ normal food uses only human grade ingredients(instead of whole ground up sick and dying animals etc), and requires significantly less to give the dog enough calories and nutrients due to no useless or harmful fillers which results in less poop to clean up and a healthier dog

Anyway, after we ran out of the (very expensive) shit food that was prescribed, and after the followup blood test showed that while Boris wasn’t really doing much worse, he still wasn’t doing BETTER, I started making Boris’ kidney diet from scratch. I guess the main concern with kidney patient dogs is restricting phosphorus. I’m not sure why, but it is, so I went about searching for the cheapest, most nutrient dense, and phosphorus sparse foods I could find. What I ended up with was high fat beef and pork, winter squash, sweet potatoes, yams, normal potatoes, cream of wheat, pasta, butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, peas, and carrots. I know this is also the first close-up you’ve seen of our awesome kitchen floor. I know you’re jealous, you don’t have to tell me!

The last 2 weeks on friday nights while Craig has gone to Rifle League, I’ve prepared meals for Boris. It’s surprisingly exhausting. We’re also supplementing his diet with tums (calcium carbonate helps to bind phosphorus) and B vitamin complex (his increased urination due to kidney issues causes him to excrete more B vitamins than normal) and when I find COQ10 for less than a million dollars, I’ll add that.Research suggests that dogs consuming supplemental COQ10 dramatically increases kidney function in dogs.

Boris has been enjoying the byproducts of my labor on his food, empty yogurt and cottage cheese containers, dropped pieces of squash, potatoes, carrots, and his favorite, pork shoulders stripped of their meat. He also attacks his meals like nobody’s business. He used to go crazy for his old food, but he gets super nuts for the new wet food, he jumps (all 4 feet in the air) and gets generally crazy for it. He adores it. I’ve worked out basic cost to be around $3.50 (at the high end) per day, about $25 per month, which is just over twice the cost of his old food, which still sucks, especially if you factor in the cost of labor, but decent considering that Boris is still alive, and we’re not feeding him shit, I’ve got him on a diet of absolutely human grade ingredients, prepared safely by my hands. Even though I have to brush his teeth now that he’s not eating dry food. 😦