Well, Bella seems to be doing great! (Except for her runny nose, sneezing, snuffling, and snorting as of late....she doesn't have a fever and seems to feel great, so I guess it must all be related to allergies/dry air/something???) She has gained back the weight she lost + a little....she weighs 4.2 lbs now!! She seems to still love her home-cooked food, and she still has no symptoms, so yay!
Because her pH was 6.0 when she had the UTI after her spay, and then was 8.5 when we repeated the urinalysis after finishing the antibiotics, I ordered some pH test strips. We were pretty sure the 8.5 was from the veggies (esp. green beans) that I had been adding to her diet each day, and since adding the veggies seemed to affect her pH AND her stools became very loose, I stopped adding in veggies every day. Yesterday I used the pH strips for the first time, but I just touched them to a fresh wet spot on her pad instead of catching it and dipping the strip (which I will try to do this weekend)....it was 6.5. I emailed Dr. W with an update on how good she's doing and mentioned this to him, but he said that actually 6.5 is ideal for the prevention of urate stones which are what she is susceptible to precipitate. I'm a little confused by that but I didn't want to bother him about it until I asked you all....I was under the impression that urate stones and crystals (and calcium oxalate stones and crystals?) had the possibility of forming in an acidic pH (which is anything below 7 right?....but maybe it's lower than 6.5??) I would be grateful for any input on that!
Also, I know Crystal asked me before if the recipe he provided me with met AAFCO guidelines awhile back, but truthfully I forgot all about that until today when I was reading a thread on dog food (I know some of you read it too
) So, when I emailed him today with her update, I asked him if it was within those guidelines, and he responded that it was not....that is it much closer to the National Research Councils (NRC) recommendations except that B vitamins are higher and the copper is marginal. He also said that he thinks the NRC recommendations are much more realistic. Soooo, Crystal, I need some input on that too....what do you think about conforming to NRC but not to AAFCO guidelines? I'm really hoping that is still okay for her since we're already this far into this, but if not.....I don't know. I would appreciate your insight very much!