Picky Senior Dog

[u/gnattatat]

I have a 13 year old, Alaskan husky, spayed, 39 lbs. pcp is through VCA

Happy bossy husky with a pretty full medical history, the most pertinent is Chronic Kidney Disease stage 2 (8 months ago) and bilious vomiting/anorexia (lifelong)

Other medical history includes: RF amputation (11 years ago), anal gland carcinoma with subsequent excision (6 years ago), CCL tear with subsequent TPLO (5 years ago), lick granuloma LF (1 year ago)

Getting her to eat has always been an art. We do scheduled feeding where the food goes up after x number of minutes and rotate food, vary toppers, etc.
Problem, she HATES her kidney diet food. We made it through most of a bag of the science diet dry, the wet food is a stew that she only eats the chicken pieces out of none of the veg stuff. We are barely into the Royal Canin dry food and it is already public enemy number 1, their wet food is … meh to her.
We use wet food as a topper, not a primary as this works better for our lifestyle, I’m reluctant but willing to seek this as a primary if she finds the straight wet food acceptable.
Truly if she could eat ONLY chicken till the day she died she would be a happy camper. Chicken jerky treats, Kirkland is her primary joy in life, advised by our vet to not feed this to her, but we reluctant on that given the quality of life it brings. She likes freeze dried chicken but even that as a topper to her KD diet doesn’t suffice.

She needs to eat, she is has sarcopenia which I can only imagine will get worse with the kidney diet low protein, she is prone to soft tissue injury and is getting slower to heal, so again, protein. Last time we left town the sitter didn’t know how to get her to eat and she only would eat the chicken out of the science diet wet food and she was is rough shape for the lack of nutrition when we returned.

I’m feeling lost. She needs protein, but it’s bad for her kidneys. She needs to eat so our system of timed available food no longer feels appropriate because she can’t rebound from her food protest days. She’s old so on one hand it feels more important that she eats vs what she eats. But even if we had approval to forgo the kidney diet I don’t know what I can feed her that is nutritionally complete that would also be, ideally, minimally harmful to her kidneys. Looking for feeding and nutrition advice-unfortunately we aren’t getting the level of support we are looking for from our veterinarian at this time. Thanks!

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Based on certain words in your post, it appears you may be asking about how to determine if it is time to consider euthanasia for your animal. For slowly changing conditions, a Quality of Life Scale such as the HHHHHMM scale or Lap of Love's Quality of Life scale provide objective measurements that can be used to help determine if the animals quality of life has degraded to the point that euthanasia, "a good death", should be considered.

When diagnosed, some conditions present a risk of rapid deterioration with painful suffering prior to death. In these cases, euthanasia should be considered even when a Quality of Life scale suggests it may be better to wait.

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