Does your Depressed-Looking Dog Suffer from Renal Insufficiency?

Renal insufficiency, otherwise known as kidney failure, when it strikes, can affect a dog as badly as it can affect a person. As with people, kidney failure in a dog can either be acute, occurring all at once and staying for a short time, or it can be the really troublesome chronic kind building up over a period of time and never leaving. Neither kind is more desirable than the other and each can come with its own set of special challenges. All of which is to say that the more quickly you are able to catch these symptoms and identify them, the more you will be able to do about them.

The first thing you need to understand here is that while renal insufficiency in a dog is a serious disease that can potentially lead to death, that kind of depressing outcome is only one possibility. There are other happier possibilities as well. Everything depends on how early you catch the disease and what can the steps are that you take.

Let's start with the sudden variety of kidney failure the acute variety. What might cause a dog that's happily galloping about one week to suddenly come down with this the next? Well, your dog may have eaten from a container of insecticide or rat poison; or it may have swallowed antifreeze. Sometimes, a dog that's been left out unsupervised can have involved itself in a small auto accident without showing any outward signs of it. This can cause sudden renal insufficiency too. But barring these, there can be some legitimate canine medicines that can come with this kind of side effect. As for causes that are out of your control, you should probably look at bacterial infections, fungal infections or heart disease.

You're supposed to recognize this kind of kidney failure by looking at any changes in your dogs need for water or to go pee. Any pain around the kidneys, which you recognize when playing with your dog and seeing him wince, could be a sign too.

Once you take your dog in for blood tests and urine tests and the doctor does confirm your worst fears, there are some pretty good treatments that you can take advantage of. First of all, since your dogs failing kidneys won't be able to clean his system out properly, the doctor will put him on a drip of IV fluids to clean his system out. And then, if that doesn't work, he'll consider dialysis of some kind. That can get quite expensive.

Chronic renal insufficiency can occur for pretty much the same kinds of reasons. But it can happen more slowly over a period of time. Sometimes though, the dog develops chronic kidney disease and failure for genetic reasons or because of cancer or a disease called polycystic kidney disease. Your vet will probably put your dog on medication to slow the decline.

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