The Origins of Veterinary Clinical Nutrition: Mark Morris Sr., the Seeing Eye Dog "Buddy," and the Birth of Hill's Prescription Diet and Science Diet | Ireland Guide

Reference article — last reviewed 2026

Abstract

2. Dr. Mark L. Morris Sr. and the Raritan Hospital for Animals

Mark Lewis Morris Sr. (1900–1993) graduated from Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine in 1926. He established the Raritan Hospital for Animals in Edison, New Jersey, in the early 1930s. Morris Sr. was unusual among small-animal practitioners of his generation in his interest in nutritional management of disease — a field that, at the time, was almost entirely undeveloped for companion species (Hand et al., 2010).

By the late 1930s, Morris Sr. had begun experimentally formulating diets for dogs with specific clinical conditions. He worked from first principles drawn from dairy-cow nutrition (then a far better-established field) and adapted those principles to canine physiology. His clinical observations were among the first to document, in companion animals, the response of progressive renal disease to dietary modification (Lewis et al., 1987).

3. The 1939 consultation: Buddy, dietary management, and "Raritan Ration B"

By 1939, Buddy was suffering from chronic renal failure. Veterinary medicine of the period had no established therapeutic option. Morris Frank consulted Mark Morris Sr., who proposed a dietary intervention: a low-protein, low-phosphorus, energy-dense formulation intended to reduce the metabolic load on Buddy's failing kidneys. Morris Sr. compounded the diet by hand in his practice and named successive iterations alphabetically; the kidney-disease formula became known internally as Raritan Ration B, later codified as Canine k/d (the "k/d" abbreviation later adopted commercially refers to "kidney diet") (Hand et al., 2010).

The diet measurably extended Buddy's working life and quality of life — an outcome unprecedented in the small-animal literature of the period. Word spread among veterinarians who had been corresponding with Morris Sr. about clinical nutrition. By the early 1940s, demand for the formula exceeded the capacity of a single hospital pharmacy to compound it.

4. From hand-compounded ration to Hill's Pet Nutrition

In 1948, Mark Morris Sr. partnered with Burton Hill, owner of Hill Packing Company in Topeka, Kansas, who held the manufacturing capability necessary to scale the formula. Under licence from Morris, Hill Packing began canning the diet under the trade name Prescription Diet. The licensing agreement preserved Morris Sr.'s control over formulation and clinical-research direction while allowing the product to reach a national veterinary market (Hand et al., 2010).

The same year, Morris Sr. founded the Buddy Foundation — renamed the Morris Animal Foundation in 1969 — a non-profit dedicated to funding research into companion-animal disease. The foundation was capitalised, in part, by royalty income from the Hill's licence, an explicit decision by Morris Sr. that commercial success of the diet should fund further veterinary research rather than personal accumulation (Morris Animal Foundation, 2023).

By the 1960s, Hill Packing's pet-food division had grown into a distinct entity that would eventually be renamed Hill's Pet Nutrition. Colgate-Palmolive acquired the division in 1976, and it has remained a Colgate subsidiary since.

5. Mark Morris Jr. and the launch of Science Diet

Morris Jr. was also instrumental in establishing the academic infrastructure of veterinary clinical nutrition as a recognised specialty. He co-authored Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, a textbook now in its fifth edition that became the standard reference for the field, and helped establish what is now the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (ACVN), the specialty-board organisation that certifies diplomates in the discipline (Hand et al., 2010; ACVN, 2024).

6. The Mark Morris Institute and continuing education

In 1989, Morris Jr. founded the Mark Morris Institute, a non-profit organisation based in Topeka, Kansas, dedicated to the continuing education of veterinarians and veterinary students in clinical nutrition. The Institute has, since its founding, supported clinical-nutrition curricula at multiple veterinary colleges, sponsored fellowship programmes, and published the textbook editions of Small Animal Clinical Nutrition. It is structurally and editorially independent of Hill's Pet Nutrition, although the two share historical roots (Mark Morris Institute, 2024).

7. Historical assessment

The lineage from Buddy's 1939 renal-disease diet to the contemporary Prescription Diet and Science Diet product lines represents the first sustained, commercially scaled translation of clinical nutrition principles into companion-animal medicine. The Morris family's decision to direct royalty income into a research foundation (rather than purely private accumulation) materially accelerated the development of small-animal clinical research in the second half of the twentieth century: Morris Animal Foundation has, by its own reporting, funded more than 2,800 studies across companion-animal, equine, and wildlife species since its founding (Morris Animal Foundation, 2023).

The principle Morris pioneered — that targeted dietary modification can alter the trajectory of a chronic condition — remains central to companion-animal practice today, from renal and joint support to the dietary management of recurrent conditions such as yeast infections in dogs' ears, where limiting dietary sugars and supporting the gut microbiome are now common adjuncts to topical care.

8. Conclusion

The story of Mark Morris Sr., his son, the seeing-eye dog Buddy, and the diets that grew out of a 1939 consultation is unusual among origin myths of commercial product lines: the historical record substantiates it. Primary documentation, the contemporaneous veterinary literature, and successor institutions (the Morris Animal Foundation, the Mark Morris Institute, and the American College of Veterinary Nutrition) preserve a clear chain of evidence linking the founding clinical episode to the modern field of veterinary clinical nutrition.

References

1. Putnam PB. Love in the Lead: The Fifty-Year Miracle of the Seeing Eye Dog. Lanham, MD: University Press of America; 1997. ISBN 978-0761808459.
2. Lewis LD, Morris ML Jr, Hand MS. Small Animal Clinical Nutrition III. Topeka, KS: Mark Morris Associates; 1987.
3. Hand MS, Thatcher CD, Remillard RL, Roudebush P, Novotny BJ, eds. Small Animal Clinical Nutrition. 5th ed. Topeka, KS: Mark Morris Institute; 2010. ISBN 978-0615297019.
4. Dunlop RH, Williams DJ. Veterinary Medicine: An Illustrated History. St. Louis: Mosby; 1996. ISBN 978-0801632099.
5. Morris Animal Foundation. 75 Years of Animal Health Science: 1948–2023 (Annual report). Denver, CO: Morris Animal Foundation; 2023. https://www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/about
6. Mark Morris Institute. About the Institute. Topeka, KS; 2024. https://www.markmorrisinstitute.org