Tag Archives: diet

Practically every day, I get an email with a photo of patient poop. The worried owner is usually concerned about constipation or diarrhea. Assessing a pet’s stool quality is a critical part of a complete medical history — so much so that veterinarians use fecal scoring charts to quantify stool quality. This visual scale helps veterinarians communicate clearly about what is normal and what is not. Quantifying stool quality helps veterinarians and clients to speak the same language, ensuring you and your veterinarian agree on whether your pet truly has diarrhea, constipation, or a healthy stool.

I debated long and hard about writing a blogpost on diarrhea the day before Thanksgiving. It seems like I should write about gratitude, but the diarrhea topic won out. Why?

This year’s theme for World Kidney Day (March 13) is “Are your kidneys OK? Detect early, protect kidney health.” The veterinary staff of the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center supports that sentiment entirely. Inspired by my colleagues’ work on protecting kidney health, today’s blogpost provides a “kidney primer,” curated from previous blogposts, to help pet families understand kidney disease and its treatment.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the most common disorders of cats and a common cause of mortality in older cats. Veterinarians don’t know what causes chronic kidney disease, but we know feeding a special diet helps cats with CKD maintain quality of life. In cats with CKD, kidney diets have been shown to be superior to regular adult cat food in limiting episodes of illness and death related to chronic kidney disease. Today’s blogpost will focus on the benefits of feeding your cat a kidney diet when they have a CKD diagnosis.

Puppy owners are overwhelmed by food choices available for their new family member, according to a recent survey. This feeling might be in part because dog owners have to make all the food decisions alone: dogs lack the ability to order their own food on UberEats or communicate their preferences in a helpful way! Several recent research publications highlight factors impacting dietary choices for dogs. I’ll discuss those findings in the blogpost below.