The Best Foods For Dogs With Chronic Active Hepatitis

My blue female Doberman named Misty has been living with Chronic Active Hepatitis for several years now.  When she was first diagnosed, she was in really bad shape.  She is now a healthy, happy and slightly on the porky side. If you are finding this post because you are searching the web for answers on this very frightening disease in your dog, you may also want to click here to read a previous post that describes what Chronic Active Hepatitis is and how my dog has dealt with it over the years.

The following information is based on my own personal experience with my dog that has CAH. You must consult your own veterinarian for the specific needs of your dog. There are many different forms of Hepatitis in dogs that require a different form of treatment. Do not follow the advice below without the approval from your vet!

According to my vet and much research I have done over the internet, one of the keys to managing copper toxicity Chronic Active Hepatitis is to drastically reduce the amount of copper in your dog’s diet. To maintain control over this, I have been feeding my dog a diet of half homemade low-copper foods and half Innova brand dry dog food. She was initially on strictly a homemade diet when she was first diagnosed. This diet consists of chicken breasts, sweet potatoes, rice, green beans, hard boiled eggs and flax oil. If you are making your own food for your dog, you may want to click here to see a list of the copper content in common foods. Once her liver levels were under control, I decided to add in some kibble to give her teeth something to crunch on and to give my kitchen stove a bit of a break! I chose Innova because I had heard that it was one of the best foods with the lowest copper content. My dogs love it and Misty’s liver levels have remained under control for as long as I have been using it.

Even though Misty’s current diet has done wonders to keep her CAH in check, I have decided to completely change it. Why fix something that isn’t broken? Two reasons…. 1.) Cooking homemade food for your dog is a pain in the ass. 2.) I found some premium dry dog foods with a much lower copper content than Innova.

I have been on a quest to find a convenient yet comparable substitute for the homemade diet for several years now with no luck. I have looked at dehydrated foods, raw foods, canned foods and freeze-dried foods and all of them seemed to have either a copper additive (good for most dogs, not dogs with CAH) or they had organ meat in them (organ meat is high in copper).  While exhibiting at the 2010 Phoenix Pet Expo, I stopped by the Pawsitive Foods booth to see if they had any suggestions for me.  They gave me a brochure on N-R-G dehydrated dog food. I was excited to see that the Optimum Diet line did not contain a copper additive nor did it have any organ meat. Woooo Hooo! Perhaps this is the homemade substitute that I have been looking for??

A few days after the show, I got a call from Pawsitive Foods. Not only did they remember to follow up with me, but they also took the time to search through all of their available foods and prepare a breakdown of the copper content in each of them for me. Click here to read a recent blog post describing their remarkable customer service. Here is the breakdown that they gave me of premium dog foods and their nutrient contents, sorted by copper content lowest to highest:

After reviewing this data, I decided to give the Great Life Grain Free Chicken dry dog food a try because it has half the copper content as Innova. I also decided to switch out the homemade food for the NRG dehydrated food. I didn’t want to make this switch all at once because it would upset my little girls stomach too much. Also, I wanted to introduce one new food at a time so I could tell which one was the culprit if she started showing any CAH symptoms. I decided to start by switching out the dry food. I weaned her off the Innova after about 4 days and she is now on 1/2 Great Life dry food and 1/2 of homemade food. I think it is going pretty well so far except that she is very gassy! Peeee Ewwww! She isn’t gobbling the dry food up like she did with the Innova. She picks out the homemade food first and then leaves the dry food for a while before she goes back to it. This is very odd for her because usually her whole bowl is empty in 30 seconds flat then she proceeds to hover over the Chihuahua’s bowl to snatch up any leftovers when she is done.

I’m going to give it a few more days to see if she develops a taste for the food and whether her intestines calm down on it before I try the switch over to NRG. I’ll keep an update going on this blog post so those of you that are looking for the perfect diet for your dog with Chronic Active Hepatitis can follow the results and make your own decisions with the guidance of your vet.

Here’s a photo of my Misty Blue looking happy and healthy.  She’s missing most of her hair because she also has Color Dilution Alopecia (also common in Blue Dobermans) but it doesn’t seem to bother her much.

Update 7/10/10  – Misty is totally on 1/2 great Life dry food and 1/2 NRG Optimum chicken dehydrated food and she is doing just fine. She still doesn’t seem to like the taste as much as her previous diet but I’m hoping it grows on her. Life is so much easier now that I don’t need to spend a half a day every other week slaving over a hot stove for her (although she is worth it!).