Renal Dysplasia

B

belvin20

Forums Regular
Much to my sadness my 10 month old Storm has been diagnosed with a kidney problem called Renal Dysplasia, which is mal formed kidneys at birth. My vet said it is a genitic defect that any dog can get. Only treatment is special foods and likely max life is 2 to 3 years. Has anyone out there had this kidney problem show up on their Sheltie? If so, what should I expect and is your dog still living.

Note: At this time Storm is fine, the problem was found in a routine blood test as I was going to have him neutered. Since this kidney problem as shown itself, no surgery of any kind for Storm. Diagnosis was confirmed by a Ultrasound, kidneys look like Swiss Cheese.
 
Our dog was four when she was diagnosed. She had one totally shriveled kidney, and the other worked at about 25% capacity. Three in the litter of eight that I know of had it, the other two died young. Ours made it to just shy of her sixth birthday. Purina N/F is what she ate, no Science Diet.

She went from ok to crashed in less than a week, as our vet predicted she would. We had already set up a plan about when was the appropriate time to put her down. As long as she was happy and eating and stable, then it was all good. But we knew we were going to lose a dog that looked fine, and that is a hard thing.

Definitely contact the breeder, as this tends to be genetic, and tends to happen to more than one puppy in a litter.
 
My vet feels the quality of the ingredients in Science Diet is far inferior to the Purina foods. I'm not going to argue with him, he kept our dog alive a year beyond her diagnosis.
 
I just lost my Gypsy this past April, she was 5 yrs and 3 weeks old. We kept her going the last 2 years with SubQ fluids daily.

There is a great group on Yahoo called K9Kidneys, I would join if I were you. They have gathered so much info on the disease and are very helpful. You'll have to fill out some info test results etc before they approve you to join but it is well worth it.

You can also search my threads here about Gypsy, much of what we went through is documented here.

Wishing you the best, it is an awful disease.
 
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