By the time you spot kidney failure in a pet, it may already be serious.
Spotting the signs has become especially important in the wake of a major pet food recall by Menu Foods. Menu recalled 60 million cans and pouches of “chunks and gravy”-style food on Friday, saying that 10 pets had died and a number of others had suffered kidney failure after eating the food.
A complete list of the recalled products is available at www.menufoods.com/recall.
Kidneys can take a lot of punishment, Emporia veterinarians Floyd Dorsey and Duane Henrikson said. It’s possible for an animal to lose up to 75 percent of the kidney and still function normally.
“The kidney’s a pretty forgiving organ,” Henrikson said.
Unfortunately, that means that when symptoms show, a lot of damage has already been done. And unlike the liver or the skin, kidneys don’t bounce back quickly.
Acute kidney failure, such as the type that may have been brought on by the pet food, has the best chance of recovery, Dorsey said. But if kidney failure becomes chronic (long-term), as it can in an aging pet, there’s not much that can be done.
“Unfortunately, when we see it, it just depends on how much damage there’s been,” Dorsey said. “If you have a young, healthy dog with no kidney conditions, there’s probably a pretty good prognosis. ... But if they’ve had bladder stones in the past or other kidney conditions and they’re an older pet, you’re more likely to see kidney failure.”
In the early stages, a dog or cat will often pee a lot to compensate for the lack of kidney function. But the urine will be diluted and very clear.
“A lot of times they’ll drink a lot of water and then urinate a lot, because they can’t concentrate their urine,” Henrikson said.
When the kidneys start shutting down due to lack of urine, the dog or cat will start to be visibly sick. The most common symptoms include frequent vomiting, loss of appetite and depression.
“There are other things that can cause that, but that’s generally when we test for kidney failure,” Henrikson said.
The test only takes about 15 minutes and can be done in most veterinary offices. After that, a veterinarian will usually start IV fluids to keep the animal hydrated and will feed it a specialized diet, low in phosphorus and containing easily digestible proteins.
“Normally, we think we should see an improvement in three to four days,” Henrikson said. “If we don’t see an improvement in three to four days, but we don’t have a decline, in veterinary medicine a lot of times it becomes an economic question.”
In a human with failing kidneys, dialysis can be an option. That’s much less common in pets due to the time and expense, though it can be done. Dorsey said that Kansas State University’s practice does the procedure and Henrikson recalled a report on dialysis at the University of California at Davis that produced some return of kidney function after six to eight months.
Even in cases where it’s food-induced, both vets said, the size of the dog doesn’t really matter. A big dog eats more, Henrikson said, but it also has larger organs to start with.
Both veterinarians said they would be interested to hear what caused the problems in the pet food. Menu’s tests have not turned up a definitive answer, although the company said it hired a new supplier of wheat gluten about the time the affected food was made. Menu has since changed its supplier. Gluten is a source of protein in the food.
Neither Dorsey nor Henrikson has seen any cases related to the recall yet, although Henrikson said some of his patients have asked about it.
“We’ve had some calls about it, so I guess we’ll monitor it closely,” Henrikson said.