Hannah Zulueta Canine Nutrition / Kidney Disease
What to Feed a Dog With CKD
It is late, you have twelve tabs open, and every one of them is certain about something different. Start with the only question that sorts it: which dog is yours?
The average CKD dog
Eating with interest, holding weight, numbers mildly elevated and stable, no second diagnosis pulling the other direction. For this dog, a well-built standard kidney plan is a genuinely good answer, and you do not need me to hand you one.
Dr. Judy Morgan’s book and websites carry sound home-cooked kidney plans. Dr. Harvey’s base mixes give you a solid foundation you add fresh protein to. The good kidney-dog communities have workable recipes that thousands of dogs have done well on.
Whichever you choose, the plan still has to be complete: a calcium source and the full vitamin and mineral coverage, phosphorus actually held to your dog’s stage target, and calories your dog will truly eat. A standard plan followed properly beats a custom plan followed loosely.
The not-average dog
Refusing food, or losing weight. Potassium running high or low. A second diagnosis in the room, pancreatitis, a heart condition, a liver number, protein pouring into the urine. Or medications that each pull on a different mineral.
Standard plans are built for the dog in the middle, and this dog is not in the middle. A potassium running high can be pushed higher by the very renal food that is right about everything else. A pancreatitis history caps the fat that a standard plan leans on for calories. An inappetent dog needs the bowl designed around what will actually be eaten, or nothing else in the plan exists.
This is the dog I formulate for: the recipe built from your dog’s actual bloodwork, at your dog’s actual stage, around your dog’s actual appetite.
The one thing
There is no one right food. There is your dog’s food, and it follows from how sick your dog is.
The hill I will stand on
I do not accept a high BUN or a high creatinine as the end of the story. Caught early, I have watched these numbers come back down, with hydration, with the phosphorus held, with a bowl the dog actually eats, and with the underlying pressures found and addressed. A dog can live for years with this diagnosis. How sick the dog is today, and how early we caught it, decide far more than the diagnosis itself.
One number deserves its own footnote: BUN runs naturally higher in fresh-fed dogs, and the reference ranges were built on kibble. I have written about why, and it is one more reason a single number never gets to tell the whole story.
Cooked, done properly
My preference is cooked meals, and it is not a soft preference. A kidney dog is running on less reserve, and raw feeding introduces pathogens to a body with less to spare. I fed raw for years and changed my mind in public, so this is not a position I hold lightly.
Done properly means complete and balanced, not a bowl of chicken and rice. It means the phosphorus is measured, the calcium is supplied, the fat is deliberate, and the whole thing is built to a calorie target rather than eyeballed. Change one ingredient and a dozen numbers move, which is exactly why the building has to be done with the numbers visible.
What the bowl is actually managing
On wanting certainty
We all want the one right answer, the food we can buy tonight and stop being afraid. I understand the wanting. But I cannot make a recommendation without getting a sense of your dog, because the honest answer to what should I feed is another question: how sick is your dog? An eating, stable, mildly elevated dog and an inappetent dog with a potassium problem are two different assignments wearing the same diagnosis. The tabs above are the sorting. Everything else follows from which dog is in front of you.
A dog can live for years with this diagnosis.
When your dog is not the average dog, the bowl gets built from the actual bloodwork. That is what I do.
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Hannah Zulueta obtained her Certificate in Canine Nutrition from CASI Institute. She is also studying for her Doctorate in Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Herbalism from the esteemed Pacific College of Health and Medicine. If you’re as keenly interested in health for yourself, visit her website for human health: Satori Acupuncture and Herbs.
She resides in San Diego with her three dogs, Maggie, Orbit, and Mr. Higgins.
She is available for one on one consultations. She develops evidence-based recipes that meet both NRC and AAFCO nutritional standards while integrating the therapeutic food principles of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine into her formulations.
Additionally, you can find her sharing free content on Instagram.
