Don't feed your pet dog/cat food

Most of us will remember the time when we used to feed our pet dogs what we ate- roti, sabji,dal and chawal, dont forget the ghee! Our neighbour's dog used to join him for afternoon tea and Marie biscuits also! But over the last decade or so, our market has been flooded with commercial pet food- Pedigree, Drools, Hills, Eukanuba for dogs and Whiskas for cats. Like all human companions, I too took this easy way out and stopped cooking for my dogs and cats. I used to open a huge packet of Pedigree and feed all my companion animals with it, three times a day. Till I realized that as a veterinarian, we have seen a spurt of cases of companion animals dying of kidney failure- technically also called renal failure or chronic kidney disease (CKD). We traced this to the high protein content of the commercial food. High protein causes stress on the kidneys and starts interfering with their filtration mechanism. Unfortunately, by the time we realize that the animal is urinating less, not eating, vomiting etc and we rush to the vet, it is too late. Like all organs of our body, the kidney also tries to carry on till the end and when it cannot sustain the constant pressure on it, it shows the symptoms of kidney disease. So now our advice to all humans is that we should go back to cooking for our companion animals. Give them fresh chawal and little bit of curd in this hot weather. If you must give commercial pet food, keep it to the bare minimum. If we have time to cook for our families, surely we have time to cook for our animals also. At least they never complain about what is fed to them, unlike our humans!

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