Kidney Disease
in Dogs & Cats
An Introduction
Kidney disease, renal failure (chronic renal failure or CRF) is a serious disease of dogs and cats. While it tends to occur in older animals, youngsters can be affected on rare occasions. Acute renal failure may also occur.
The disease is serious, in that the body has no mechanism for replacing lost kidney tissue. Prospects for help from homeopathy depend upon our ability to stop the ongoing degeneration and tissue loss and to stimulate better function of the remaining healthy kidney tissue. If too much tissue has been lost, at the outset of treatment, then the patient cannot be saved.
Happily, there are long-term success stories (see Jo-Jo for an example).
Symptoms and signs include, dehydration, characteristic body odour and breath odour, inappetance, thirst and weight loss. Ulcers may appear in the mouth, caused by the toxic effects of urea, that accumulates (uraemia) as a result of impaired kidney function (renal function).
Causes of kidney disease are not clear but dental disease, over-vaccination (possibly via autoimmunity), toxins such as Turpentine and bacterial diseases e.g. Leptospiral infection have to be considered.
While expensive (and often unpalatable) prescription diets are often offered, we find that a well-planned home-made fresh food diet is capable of doing all the same things.
For a fuller account of this topic, see:
