Hi everyone. It has been a very long time since I have been here, but I need some advice. I have been feeding TOTW to my huskies for years. I had to take my 15 year old Husky Tasha into the vet today for a suspected UTI. She does indeed have a UTI with a lot of bacteria, blood, and crystals in her urine. The vet also did an ultrasound on her kidneys and said that the lining of her kidneys were about twice as thick as it is supposed to be. She’s on antibiotics for the next ten days and then I take her in for a repeat urinalysis. The vet said she needs to be on Hills Prescription Urinary Tract health C/D diet for the rest of her life. Do any of you have experience with this? The ingredients don’t look all that great to me, and dog food advisor doesn’t rate prescription foods. Any advice/guidance you can give is greatly appreciated.

No experience with it for dogs. We had a diabetic cat that also had uti issues and she seemed to do ok with it. But she was a cat. Just so you know purina also makes the rx diets, my vet carries both. Not alot of options but hills isnt the only rx brand

I'd be curious what makes the food "healthy" for their urinary tract.

As an anecdotal suggestion, we gave our cat apple cider vinegar and that seemed to help with her urinary issues. We also added mostly wet food to her diet so it may have been that.

ACV might be worth a shot. Don't think I've read about anything bad about giving it to dogs, but check for sure.

Mostly it has to do with minerals and vitamins. Its lower on things that would cause crystals or bladder or kidney stones which have been connected to overloading of certain vitamins and minerals... or so i was told when it came to my cat.

My vet recommended the same thing as Sasha has had more then her share of UTI's ... I took a look at the ingredients and then I talked with the folks at Fromm and decided that I'd go with their weight management formulation.  I'm thinking that it's about time to transition her to their reduced activity formulation since she's getting older and it's a bear keeping the weight off her.

I am a strong proponent of Fromm's foods.  No compensation for my recommendations, I've talked with then from time to time and 1) I like the people 2) they've never hesitated to get me to someone else if they don't immediately know the answer.

Doing the RX diet for a time to assist in getting the current situation under control isn't a bad idea barring any allergies there might be to the ingredients in the RX diet. RX diets do their job, but I do tend to be iffy about using them for long term. Knowing what kind of crystals are being formed can help you in choosing a food with the dietary makeup that will also do the job but not cause allergy issues or stomach upset. Struvites are fairly easily managed by adding moisture to their diet in the form of partial raw and toppers as well as urinary supplements like cranimals. Calcium oxolate is a calcium problem and you would need to look at calcium levels in food and in treats. Urate requires a low purine diet which is harder to find outside of RX foods but I think there are some out there. They doubtfully will score high in the quality department since they will be low in actual meat product.

The findings were Struvite crystals. It’s encouraging to know that they can be managed - I could add canned food to her dry food. She’s not a huge fan of it, but would be worth checking into. Thank you all for the tips and advice!