My dog won't eat urinary prescription food. What can I feed until the vet?

It can be tricky when our pets are picky eaters! I recommend talking to your vet about this, as there are many different possible urinary prescription diets that can help prevent her from getting future stones. If she doesn't like her current diet, there are many other brands with equally good urinary foods, and perhaps she'd find a different food more palatable. I cannot offer specific recommendations without knowing what types of stones she has a history of developing, but I'm sure your regular vet would be happy to talk to you about other prescription foods you could try. Even if they don't regularly keep the foods stocked in their clinic, they could provide a prescription for you to buy the food either online or from another vet clinic. I *do* strongly recommend keeping her on a prescription food - as you said, you don't want to risk a recurrence of stones or chronic UTI's. Hope this helps!

Hi, thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! if Lucky is on a prescription urinary diet for bladder stones, to prevent a urinary obstruction or to prevent urinary crystals it is not recommended to mix the food with anything else as it virtually makes it in effective. I would discuss other brands that may be more affordable with your Vet. Purina, Hills and Royal canin all make urinary foods. If you absolutely can not afford it then I would have him on an all canned food over the counter urinary diet and add extra water to the canned food. This will cause his urine to be more dilute. I wish you the best!

The urinary care food is a prescription diet to maintain PH at a level to prevent certain stones forming. If you give it to a dog who doesn't need it, it can actually cause the PH to change too much causing another type of stone to develop. Therefore I do not recommend feeding it to your other dog.

You may try adding a scoop of canned weight loss dog food. This would likely have less calories than chicken or hamburger. You must also remember that dogs try to train us. As long as she is healthy, she will eat when she is hungry. It is OK for most dogs to miss a meal here and there as long as they don’t have a metabolic health concerns (like diabetes). You may also try mixing the canned food with water to create a gruel and pour this over the kibble and mix well. I hope this helps and please feel free to post any additional questions.

The most common cause for a pet not to eat their food is illness. If she ate her non-urinary diet well before and now she suddenly won't eat it, that's suspicious. I recommend to call your veterinarian and have her examined. It also sounds like she needs to eat the urinary diet for her health. These diets often come in canned and dried formula. You may also try switching the brand of urinary food. I hope this helps and they figure it out quickly.

Likely the reason why Sandy hasn't had any urinary infections is because the diet is helping prevent them. I've seen it where owners take their pet off the prescription food because they aren't having any more problems, but once off the food, the problems return. In my opinion, I would not recommend taking her off of the food, but if you would like to, I would speak with your vet about an appropriate food to feed Sandy instead since they were the ones to prescribe it to her in the first place.

If you are buying the prescription diet directly from your vet I would recommend looking at an online pet pharmacy to see if they carry the food. Often times these places can offer bulk discounts to purchasing cans and may also have a lower price available than your vet can offer. Your vet can send in the prescription for you so that you can then purchases there. Some other brands such as Royal Canin, Eukanuba and Pro Plan also offer prescription urinary diets so if Science Diet is too expensive, you may want to price shop and see if the other prescriptions available would work.