My elderly dog is currently on an IV due to kidney failure in an animal hospital, and we’ve been told he either needs to be on dialysis for what remains of his life or he has a few days at most otherwise.
I am open to dialysis, which would require immediate surgery, But I’m wondering if anyone else has been faced with the same choice and what choice they made and why since unfortunately cost is also a factor.
While I’m open to dialysis, I’m still not sure whether it’s genuinely the best option. Obviously there is the question of his quality of life. I don’t want to lose him if I can avoid it, And I’m not necessarily worried about the cost as long as it doesn’t bankrupt me and my partner. But it’s something I still have to find out.
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone else who’s been faced with this situation and why they made the decision they made.
Honestly, I think cost is not the issue here. Dialysis (I assume they mean peritoneal dialysis, involving the placement of an access point) isn’t very pleasant, and although it is a very hard decision to make, perhaps it’s time to accept that your dog has run out of life-years and just make him as comfortable as possible for the next few days. Depending on exactly what brought him to this point, putting him through all this may not actually extend his life by very much.
Can you just clarify whether this is a case of acute kidney failure or the end stage of chronic kidney disease?
Well, how has he been prior to going to the vet? What prompted you to bring him?
We had a similar situation with our cat. It turned out he was nowhere near end-stage and did not require dialysis; he carried on just fine for another year or so with an appropriate diet.
He was diagnosed with pancreatitis but the first vet we took him to while keeping him overnight on IV for a couple of days fed him only dry kibble, when he normally gets it soaked because he wont drink any water. That solidified in his stomach and when they saw it in an x-ray, they thought it was a foreign object in his belly. It wasn’t. Basically, to sum it all up, he wasn’t eating or drinking properly for several days, and this caused acute kidney problems and a lot of vomiting. That in turn appears to have triggered the onset of acute kidney failure because he wasn’t eating and drinking. I should add he already had some kidney issues stretching back many years, for which he got special feed.
Right now he’s showing all the symptoms of kidney failure in a dog I can find online. He’s very weak, has a lot of trouble walking, has to be force fed, et cetera.
We found another far better Vet who are doing as much as they can for him. They’re more than willing to set him up for dialysis, but it’s our choice. It’s a good place: I feel like I can trust these people.
Ok, understand now. That all sounds awful. My gut feeling is that he’s already been trying to tell you something for the last few days if he wasn’t eating/drinking properly even prior to going to the vet. This might be the moment to call time, but I suggest having a straightforward conversation with the vet and asking them if getting him prepped for dialysis is really likely to have any reasonable long-term outcome or whether he’s going to just be sick and miserable for a few days/weeks before succumbing to other issues.
The main thing you need to look for here is urine output. If there’s a lot of water throughput, that’s a good sign - his kidneys are sort-of operational and he may well have some time ahead of him. If urine output is zero or very low, then his kidneys are basically done for and I’m not convinced peritoneal dialysis will be of any use. Since you said he doesn’t drink much, I’m guessing the situation is the latter one.
My other concern is he’s going to have to go through the dialysis for hours at a time at first, then spent half the day at the vet getting more dialysis a couple of days a week after that. We spoke to a lady here who is doing that, with her dog, but she still has to force feed it to get it to eat. we are going to talk about the options tonight, and whether to go ahead with an operation which, if we decide to go with it, would probably happen tomorrow.
We had to put our sweet cat down two years ago, due to cancer. I’ll spare her suffering but all in all she died in my arms, un- afraid, surrounded by her loving family.
My sister in law also put her elderly dog down last year. She also needed dialysis and my SIL brought her back and forth to the vets for three or four weeks. IMO, that poor dog suffered even more because the treatment dragged her along.
It is a heartbreaking decision either way. I wish you and your family the best.
Because we’ve been force feeding him a mixture of diluted kibble mixed with water and other things, he’s producing more urine, no, so hopefully that’s a good sign. I don’t think this Vet would be willing to go ahead with an operation if he thought the prognosis wouldn’t be good.
Kibble is mostly horrendous stuff. We were recommended to feed out cat a ‘renal diet’, which I discovered was mostly corn and rice. I was appalled. If you had to design a diet to exacerbate kidney failure in carnivores, that would be it. We fed him fatty meat. His blood work quickly went back to somewhere approximating normal, his nausea went away, and he was fine for a good while. You may want to attempt this, although I suspect your vet will vehemently disagree. “Force feeding” an animal that does not want to eat is rarely a good idea.
But yes, if he has good urine output then you may find that peritoneal dialysis will have some value.
hmmm. I don’t think vets are malicious or unkind, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume that he has only your interests in mind. I still regret putting one of our cats through some very unpleasant surgery, which killed him anyway. I suggest just asking them what the prognosis is, given their recommended treatment. Weeks, months, or years?
It’s actually not as bad as it sounds. I thought it would be bad, but it wasn’t. The condition gives you ulcers , that can make it painful to chew and swallow food, but if it’s liquidised, that makes it easier, or at least I think that’s how it goes.
I can not tell you what to do, only share what we went though with one of our cats.
2 1/2 years ago, 13 years old then, we ended up at the vet with all kind of symptoms, not eating, drinking and throwing up, and some other.
We went through lab tests, and she was diagnosed with stage IV kidney failure, days till weeks at best.
Besides some medicines, we were advised to inject her with liquid to keep the fluids on an acceptable level, and came home with needles, hoses, bottles and some more.
Well, long story short, I did it for 10 days, it was an absolute disaster, for me, but more important, also for her.
It was a tremendous stress, and after some days of very serious thoughts, I decided to stop.
It was not the way I want to end my life myself, and I concluded that it was not the way I wanted to let her suffer in her final days.
If its time, its time, keep the interest of the pet in mind.
Wish you all the best.
PS. In our case, she turned out to be the one in the million, she started eating and drinking, and in the meantime we are 2 1/2 years further, still going strong in spite of recent blood test results totally off the scale …
Exactly the same situation with us. We tried it a few times, but it was clearly very unpleasant for the cat so we stopped doing it. It turned out to be entirely pointless. Similar deal with the ‘renal diet’; a bit of reading revealed that big cats, subjected to the same thing, don’t even recognise it as food and prefer to starve.
I get the feeling vets (and doctors) tend to go for sledgehammer approaches when it’s not entirely necessary. And in that particular instance, I was not impressed with his grasp of basic physiology; the recommended diet was quite obviously counterproductive.
I had to reread your posts because I don’t want to seem heartless. Your elderly dog cannot eat, has ulcers and pancreatitis, needs dialysis and is force fed.
Prognosis is for what? To extend life?
Again, and I hope this makes your inevitable choice easier when the time comes: we loved our cat and she loved us. At the end, whenever I sat down she would curl up in My lap and sleep. When the vet finally diagnosed her with mouth cancer and told us how much suffering and pain cats can endure, I knew that it was time for us to give her that last bit of respite.
She got a shot of feline cocaine or something and tore around the house and growled for a day. We were informed that she could receive a shot like that once a week which would prolong her life and somewhat mitigate her pain, as she’d be seriously coked up.
We said goodbye two days after that last visit. It still breaks my heart but I know % that we did her right.
Sorry to hear of your situation with your beloved dog. I had to make the final decision in 2020 with my18 year old cat Lauban who had been taking meds for declining kidney function but also had a tumor wrapped around his liver that was inoperable. I know the situation isn’t the same as your with your dog, but I would like to recommend my vet to you if you have the time or desire to get another opinion. It’s Taipei Animal Hospital on Guangfu near Jiankang Rd (on Guangfu between Nanjing and Jiankang). He’s excellent and will be straight up with you about the situation, but also is most certainly not a vet to quickly suggest euthanasia when owners are in that timeframe of thought. I also had to put down my 20 year old cat Vader last year in May after a series of strokes. The vet gave me super care and advice for what was the final 2 months until I had to make the decision myself that it was time.
Do what’s right for you guys, but if you want another opinion, try my vet.
My dog and my gfs dog. My mum put my dog down when he started to have serious problems and my gf kept taking care of her dog right until the end. (After blindness, dementia, losing the ability to walk, cancer etc)
After seeing both sides i strongly believe the second way is not how to go about it. It is needless torture and suffering for the dog, yourself, and everyone else involved. In my gfs case her parents wouldn’t say shit and neither would the vet until she changed vets right at the end. Really made me lose respect for vets here and her parents too.
% that we did her right.