Advice please regarding food for dog with pancreatitis

[Veganforlife]

My miniature schnauzer,who is 10;..( only had him 3 months) has developed pancreatitis,he’s been very ill ,and had some tests done and a biopsy for a lump we are waiting the results of .
Vet has suggested royal canan ,gastrointestinal food.
I just collected the first lot from the vets ,and paid £59 for just under 3 weeks supply ..
Is there anything else a bit cheaper ,vet says it just needs to be a low fat food ,but couldn’t recommend anything other than what they sell.

[BiteyShark]

I would use allaboutdogfood.co.uk and see what other brands have similar properties.

I know millies wolfheart does several low fat flavours.

[Veganforlife]

Thanks bitey will try there x

[BiteyShark]

If you use the drop down on millies wolfheart for dog food a few of them have (low fat) next to them.

[TheoriginalLEM]

My dog is prone to recurrent pancreatitis. He has burns complete food generally although id give him GI generally, it is expensive though. You may be able to buy it cheaper from online pharmacies (its a prescription diet so not for general sale).

What i would say is absolutely no titbits other than chicken etc. My dog is ok with the odd bonio biscuit but anything else triggers him. Dentasticks are the work of the devil and = a week on a drip for my boy.

It can take a while to fully recover but he'll get there. They generally dont want to eat at first, if he wont eat the prescription diet then feed anything as its better they eat something.

[CaptainMyCaptain]

We were told anything under 10% fat would be OK after our dog recovered from pancreatitis. We always check the contents, senior food tends to be low fat. While she was ill I made her food with chicken, rice and vegetables but this doesn't include all the nutrients for a long term diet apparently.

[ImAncient]

We are having the same issue. She’s currently on hills prescription diet I/d. I’m not particularly impressed with it I have to say. Once the holidays 🤞 are over I’m going to try a couple of alternatives.

She has a carrot instead of her whimzee chew & boiled chicken for her rewards put walking. (She’s a rescue). She quite likes the hills biscuits so she gets 1 of those after her walk & if I’ve groomed her.

[Veganforlife]

Vet hasn’t given me much info really ,other than said that’s the only food the recommended.
They said if it happens again he has to go in and get put on a drip .
There dosnt seem to be any medication to stop it happening ,and we weren’t given any advice ,we paid £430 altogether for the blood tests and biopsy,and just got told he has pancreatitis,swap his food

[Veganforlife]

Only just got him as well ,just before lockdown

[CaptainMyCaptain]

We had some medication from the vet as well as the tests and it cost over £500, fortunately we were insured.

[Veganforlife]

I’ve not claimed on insurance,it’s already £60 a month ,I don’t want to push it up higher .
What medication did you get for the pancreatitis captain ,so I can ask for some

[CaptainMyCaptain]

She had Buprecare multidose by subcutaneous injection at the vets, Cerenia injection at the vets and Gabapentin tablets at home.

[CaptainMyCaptain]

The Gabapentin is a pain killer rather than a treatment for the condition.

[spiderlight]

Hopping onto the thread because our 9-year-old cocker was diagnosed with pancreatitis yesterday evening. He'd been unwell off and on for a couple of weeks, with a high temperature and loss off appetite, a couple of instances of vomiting and one day of awful diarrhoea. He's had an ultrasound that showed an inflamed duodenum and blood tests that confirmed pancreatitis. The vet suggested low fat Burns or Royal Canin, and a friend who really knows her stuff has suggested Naturediet white fish or a customised food from www.purepetfood.com/ but for the next day or two he's on plain old Chappie, which is all we've been able to get hold of locally. Apparently a lot of dogs with pancreatitis do really well on Chappie.

I feel very guilty because we'd been using squeezy cheese as a high-value treat/distraction to help us groom him during lockdown (he's a bit of a Yeti) and that's what seems to have triggered it :(

[moosemama]

My boy was recently inpatient for a week with pancreatitis (caused by longterm steroid treatment) so not exactly the same.

We had him on a home cooked diet of white fish (frozen fish fillets by the bag from Tesco work out pretty cheap) and rice or quinoa for a few weeks, eventually adding in some salmon as well, plus a multi-vit tablet to cover an nutritional imbalance. Once he was settled and recovered we tried a few of the foods recommended on this thread, but everything just went straight through him or made him sick, even the tiniest bit added to his fish dinner would trigger it.

Our vet said, in his opinion, the hydrolysed vet foods like Hills, etc should only be a last resort and lots of dogs refuse to eat them, but if that’s all they can tolerate then sometimes there is no choice. His own dog had had pancreatitis and his preferred path was complete digestive rest, followed by home cooked simple, low fat, before trying to find a commercial food that suited the individual dog.

We were just about to give in and go for the vet diet when, after reading lots of reviews from other people with dogs that had pancreatitis on multiple websites and speaking to two different vets, we decided to try him on Chappie Original and that suited him perfectly. His appetite and poo normalised literally overnight. He was a very poorly dog for other reasons though, so even though Chappie is not a great quality food in, we chose to just keep him on that, as he was tolerating it and starting to gain a little bit of weight back.

Cerenia is a life saver when they are sick or too nauseas to eat.

[CaptainMyCaptain]

I have heard of Chappie being recommended before for sick dogs. It's one of the cheaper brands, I think, and to us looks and smells disgusting but dogs obviously think differently and like it.

[spiderlight]

I'm surprised at how much ours likes Chappie. He's been used to Naturo, which is twice the price, and had a different flavour every day, but he's wolfing down the Chappie and has gone back to lick his bowl twice since he had his tea.

[FoxtrotOscarPoppet]

We moved our dog onto Lily’s Kitchen tins after her pancreatitis.

[spiderlight]

This is a really useful calculator for working out the fat content of wet food. You have to take the moisture into account, so for example if a tin says its fat content is 5.4%, once you've adjusted for the moisture, it's actually 27%, which is too high. Our vet has told us to aim for around 10% or less.

God, this is a minefield. I feel like I've been peering at labels all day. And the new people who've just bought the house next door have just been treated to Eddie and me celebrating his first properly solid poo for about ten days, so that'll be good for neighbourly relations!

[OhMyDarling]

Animed.co.uk

Works out £23 a bag cheaper than buying from the vets directly for about a months worth- and free delivery. Arrived in 3 days during lockdown and saved my sanity.

I think it’s horrendous how much vets are allowed to charge for treatment and drugs.

We got human eye drops instead of exactly the same ones from the vet last year- Saved me £60!!!!!!

[spiderlight]

Some other links I've been given that look useful:

www.bellaandduke.com/guide/pancreatitis-in-dogs/?fbclid=IwAR1l9BkCruU454Kdwq88hD_ItiAxQPztu2AZ2tBy1fRQ2R-ZXnhpUdKNHU4

www.littlepetbiscuitcompany.co.uk/collections/low-fat-dog-treats

[AriettyHomily]

Mine is prone to pancreatitis and also diabetic.

He has been happily regulated on Chappie Wet and Hills w/d dry for almost two years and no flare ups and this seems to be the case for many many dogs. It's the lowest fat food we could find and whilst I wouldn't have dreamt of feeding it before he was ill it was the vets recommendation to try it. Chappie Original is the lowest fat. Its somethng like 79p per can v £2.79 per can for the Hills wet. I get the Hills from Animed.

Only downside is that is stinks.

[AriettyHomily]

Oh and it's worth having a look at the ingredients on the prescribed food, the Hills w/d was worse imo than the chappie.

[pigsDOfly]

Chappie was recommended to me by a vet nurse some time ago because of suspected pancreatitis.

My dog is on Royal Canin Sensitivity Control food, which suits her very well and keeps her well.

Just a couple of points I've found OP: firstly the amount they recommend on the tin is way more than my dog needs or should be fed.

Feeding her the amount they suggests actually cause her to have bad diarrhoea. I had to experiment until I found the right amount to keep her happy and her weight consistent.

Secondly: if you're going to continue feeding your dog on RC food don't buy it from your vet.

I order it online from Pets at Home and it's about 80p cheaper a tin than my vet charges. You can also get it from lots of other places online for a similar price to PAH.

My dog was briefly put on a Hills very low fat food recently after she had eaten something in the park that really upset her stomach and she was starving the whole time she was on it.

I'm happy with the Royal Canin food she's on, she really likes it and as I said, it seem to work well for her.

[Sitdowncupoftea]

@Veganforlife I had a dog with pancreatitis. My vet told me to buy Hills prescription diet it was tinned food and was the one with purple label low fat. I bought some direct from vets then use to buy it online. It was around £22 for a case of 12 I think. I bought it from VetUk or zooplus. Even though its called Hills prescription diet you don't need a prescription to buy it. He had no more pancreatic problems once on it.

[Carandi]

My dog had recurrent pancreatitis for several years and then we moved her to a new diet and, touch wood, she's been ok since. I feed her Royal Canin Vet Diet Gastro Low Fat Canine. I also buy bags of frozen boneless white fish from Asda and microwave a couple of pieces which gets mashed up and put on top for a bit of variety. Make sure not to feed any stodgy treats. We stick to Bonios or gravy bones, nothing like marrowbone treats.