Animals have various nutritional requirements depending on their age, breed and health status. Proper nutrition has a huge impact on your pet’s overall health, whether they are young and healthy, senior or have a medical condition.  We recommend consulting a veterinarian or veterinary technician regarding their nutrition. Our team has had formal nutritional training to learn what specific recommendations should be made during the lifetime of your pets. We will work with you to find your pet a food that optimizes their health, and also fits with your ideas and budget. 

Optimize health in patients with medical conditions: 

Specific medical conditions often require tailored nutrient requirements.  For example, it is very important to choose the correct diet for animals with heart disease, diabetes, urinary crystals or kidney disease.

Prevent disease in healthy and aging animals:

Many diets can help prevent health problems. For example, urinary crystals in cats can be a life-threatening condition and are best to prevent especially in male cats.  We can slow the prevention of dental disease with prescription dental diets and we can support joint health in aging dogs with mobility diets. There are even diets that have ingredients to help with anxiety! 

Prevent and treat obesity:

Obesity is an extremely common problem in pets.  We often show our love with treats, extra servings of dog food and table food. However, obesity causes serious health conditions in pets, including diabetes and arthritis. There are studies that show significantly lower life expectancy in pets that are even mild to moderately overweight.  Many times, owners aren’t even aware that their pet is overweight until they have a weight assessment and body condition scoring by our veterinary team.  We offer a prescription weight loss plan to help your pet achieve healthy body weight.

Expect your pet’s diet to change throughout life!

It is not uncommon for your pet to be moved through 5 different diet choices throughout the various stages in their lifetime depending on their age, lifestyle, and possible disease processes. If you think about it logically, would you feed your newborn baby the same food as an adult human? Would you offer the same food to a senior citizen as you would an active, growing teenager? For this reason, we feel each animal should be assessed on an individual basis.  

Trust the experts. Don’t be fooled by marketing tactics, myths, and misinformation.

Industry marketing strategies for pet foods makes it difficult to choose the proper food for your pet, as ingredients and marketing can be deceiving. When accepting advice on food choice please keep in mind the source of information. Is it from someone with a medical background in pet nutrition? We are happy to discuss your pet and their needs at any time when you come into or phone the clinic.

We carry a variety of veterinary exclusive diets for :

• Healthy life stages – puppy/kitten, adult, senior pets

• Dental health 

• Diabetes management

• Kidney disease management

• Liver disease management

• Allergy management

• Food sensitivities

• Gastrointestinal disease

• Joint/Mobility management

• Weight management or weight loss  

We carry both Medi-Cal Royal Canin, Purina and Hill’s Prescription pet food. We are also able to special order other brands as required by your pet. Food may be purchased in our hospital or online via our Webstore.

All pet foods sold in grocery stores and pet stores will have an AAFCO claim on their label.  So do the veterinary exclusive diets we carry. However, AAFCO does not regulate, test, approve or certify pet foods in any way. AAFCO only establishes the nutritional standards for complete and balanced pet foods, and it is the pet food company’s responsibility to formulate their products according to the appropriate AAFCO standard.

One big difference in prescription like of diets is that they go far beyond most pet food companies with further testing on their products to ensure product quality and safety.

Prescription Diet Testing Beyond AAFCO trials

• Palatability feeding trials
• Digestibility feeding trials
• Blood parameters
• Relative Supersaturation trials
• Stool conformation
• Amino acid analysis
• Fatty acid analysis
• Toxicology studies and stability data
• Clinical trials for efficacy in conjunction with vets and pet owners
• Peer reviewed research

The centrepiece of the laboratory in terms of product safety at the veterinary exclusive food plants is the use of Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (NIRS), a system that compares the “fingerprint” of an ingredient to a database of standards. If the NIRS results for the incoming ingredient do not match the standard, then the ingredient is rejected prior to unloading.

The consequence of this remarkable technology is that pet owners can be assured that Royal Canin Veterinary Exclusive products are free of any contamination and are 100% safe. Hill’s Prescription Diets also perform safety inspections to ensure product safety.

In doing this, we feel the pet foods we carry in our hospital are not only the most researched but the most nutritious and safest products on the market. With some of the recent pet food recalls, we want to make sure your pet is eating safe, healthy and nutritious food.