The kidneys are among the most important organs in the body. Generally, we don't consider them, and when we think of vital organs we think of the heart or the brain: many don't know that if the kidneys stop working, we die.

This applies to both our pets and us. As loving owners as we are, we need to be able to intervene on time if something is wrong.

Chronic renal failure

The main job of the kidney is to filter the blood and thus eliminate the toxic substances that are ingested with food or that are created by the body itself. What are commonly called slags.

If the kidney suddenly stopped working (acute renal failure), for reasons such as kidney infections, we would realize it. The animal would feel sick, would not eat and would have a fever. We should immediately take him to the vet. We could find a solution in order to completely treat the animal.

If there is a situation of chronic renal failure, however, this is not the case.

The kidney is an organ unable to regenerate itself, and once it is destroyed it remains as it is, and the only chances to save the animal are dialysis (artificial kidney) or transplantation.

In its favour, however, there is the fact that the kidneys have a great compensatory capacity. If 30% has stopped working, the remaining 70% roll up their sleeves and manage to do the work of the missing part. Think of the people who lack one kidney and are able to live peacefully with the other.

Chronic renal failure occurs especially in elderly animals, because the stimuli that cause it must act for a long, long time.

Wrong diet, too many drugs taken in the course of life, environmental problems, small renal malformations, infectious diseases such as infectious peritonitis in cats are among the many causes that can slightly damage the kidney, but which in the long run lead to loss of its functionality.

At first, this loss is not seen at all, so we do not know if it exists or not. At some point, symptoms begin to appear, which are increasingly evident over a long time, several months actually.

Knowing how to recognize these problems means, in most cases, saving the life of the dog or cat, because there is a "point of no return" beyond which the chances of survival are almost at zero.

How to recognize chronic renal failure

When there are no symptoms, of course, no one can tell that the kidney is starting to malfunction. Not even the vet can do it, precisely because the kidney can compensate for the loss of function, and the blood and urine tests are perfect.

We begin to realize that something is wrong when the dog or cat starts drinking and urinating more than normal. So far the cause could be the heat or physical activity. Let's not be alarmed, but let's start paying closer attention to precise details to its routine, especially if the animal is elderly.

The dog or cat will progressively begin to eat less.

The kidney, in fact, for its normal functioning, firstly filters and then reabsorbs liquids because it filtered a little too much. Resorption stops working initially, and more water than normal ends up in the urine; for this reason the animal urinates more (and drinks more to compensate).

Then the filtering part stops working: thus, the toxic substances remain in the blood and are not expelled.

This state of malaise leads, as we said earlier, to loss of appetite. By eating less, the animal also begins to lose weight.

Subsequently, these toxic substances will give problems to other organs: one is the stomach, the animal will vomit more and more frequently; another is the intestine, he will have diarrhea. Then there are the mucous membranes; the animal will have ulcers in the mouth, particularly evident when yawning, red and painful.

From here on, we will get to a rather rapid deterioration, and we will notice it because the animal's breath will smell of urine and because the animal will hardly move anymore, it will always sleep. This is when the kidneys hardly work anymore, and the animal is practically poisoned by all the toxins in its circulation.

We don't have to get to this situation. If the animal starts to drink more, vomits occasionally, has intermittent diarrhea that goes away after a few days and then comes back ... Let's take it to the vet and not postpone the visit.

At this point the situation is clearly evident from the analysis, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner a therapy can be started. It will be a therapy that will keep the kidneys in their current state, and will include medicines, physical movement and a change in diet. The kidneys cannot heal, but we can prevent them from getting worse and keeping the situation as it is.

To make this possible, the therapy must be continued throughout life: stopping it means that the kidney will start to deteriorate again.

Chronic renal failure is one of the main causes of death "from old age" of people and animals. Realizing its presence means diagnosing it, and diagnosing it means guaranteeing the animal months if not years of life.

Mastitis is defined as an inflammation of the breasts. For obvious reasons, it affects only females and in the case of pregnancy or phantom pregnancy.

 Often, when it comes to older dogs and cats but also people, we hear about kidney problems.

The kidneys are much more important than you think, and their main job is to remove toxic substances from the blood and throw them away through urine.

If the kidneys stop working, the toxins remain in the blood, starting to damage organs and causing serious damages. This situation appears very slowly and gradually in elderly animals, there is however a variant in some ways more dangerous that appears suddenly: it is called acute renal failure.

The causes

There are many reasons why acute kidney failure can appear in a dog or cat. Some are easily avoidable, while others are more subtle. Fortunately, this situation can be solved, because the kidneys do not have a problem themselves, so once the cause that damages them is removed, they start working again, so a vet can completely heal this situation.

Some causes are called pre-renal, they depend on a phenomenon that occurs before the blood reaches the kidney.

One of the most frequent causes is a drop in blood pressure. If the pressure is low, the blood does not reach the kidney, which does not filter it, so in fact it does not work. There may be liver diseases, which can no longer detoxify the toxic substances ingested with food so that the kidney can expel them; even high fever, in some cases, causes kidney failure.

The owner usually sees these conditions because the symptoms are particularly noticeable.

Instead, we need to pay more attention to kidney causes, i.e. the presence of substances that are directly damaging the kidney. Some are infectious diseases such as Lehismania or Piroplasmosis, but others are poisonings: ethylene glycol is very dangerous. Human drugs given to the dog are also lethal. Finally, the ingestion of grapes, which has active ingredients that damage the kidney. These causes tend to depend on the mistakes of the owners, which is why we must be particularly careful.

Finally, there are the post-renal causes, which usually depend on the obstruction of the urinary tract. In short, stones. In this case, before the failure appears, other symptoms are seen, such as the animal, especially males, are very ill and expel urine in droplets from the pain caused by the stones. In this case, it is necessary to act as soon as possible to have them removed by a veterinarian.

How to recognize acute renal failure

Regardless of the causes, which we have reported above, it is really important for an owner is to recognize the symptoms. You can die with kidney failure if it is not treated and that is why if you recognize this situation you must intervene as soon as possible.

The first thing we notice is a state of general malaise. The animal does not move, refuses to eat, sleeps or in any case stands aside on its own; there may be fever, the nose is hot and dry.

Episodes of vomiting might appear, because the toxic substances that are not eliminated by the kidney remain in the blood, and when there are many they stimulate the gag reflex in the animal. They vomit stomach acids only if they haven't eaten anything for a while. There may be traces of blood in the vomit.

A very characteristic symptom, however, is anuria, the complete absence of urination. If you keep your dog indoors, think about how long it hasn't been going to the toilet. If it's been a long time, and he is not able to go to the toilet (if there are no kidney problems, even with a high fever he will pee the same), it could indicate the fact that urine is not present in the bladder at all and that it is not really produced, or that it fails to pass through.

We pay close attention to this detail if the dog or cat (from the litter box for cats) has not peed for more than seven to eight hours.

If the situation degenerates, then the tremors and convulsions begin, but at this point any responsible owner will have taken their pet to a veterinarian. However, when we reach this point there is not much to do, even for the vet.

For this reason, it is good to know how to recognize the symptoms to understand when it is appropriate to go to a clinic as soon as possible.

Knowing the causes allows us not to give dangerous food to the dog or drugs for human use. Knowing the symptoms allows us to solve as soon as possible a problem.

When we take our animals to the vet, it can happen quite often that we are are asked for a stool sample to be analyzed. What is the use of a stool test and how is a sample collected?

 The stomach is a very important organ in the digestive system of our pets. Both dogs and cats are in fact carnivores, so protein digestion (which takes place in the stomach) is much more important than fibre digestion (which takes place in the large intestine).

This causes gastritis, (inflammation of the stomach) in a dog or cat to be much more debilitating than it would be, for example, in a horse.

Apart from being painful, gastritis also leads to another fundamental problem, which is malnutrition. Since the food is not digested, even if the animal ingests it, it does not absorb it, and the result is the same as not eating at all.

Causes of gastritis

In order to digest food, the stomach, produces an acid, which we know as gastric juice. Ours produces a certain quantity while that of domestic animals much more, in proportion to us. The chemical formula of the juice is HCl, or Hydrochloric Acid, what we all have at home, diluted, as Muriatic Acid.

When things work well, the stomach produces acid by taking its starting components from the blood vessels. The acid not only digests the contents of the stomach, but also the stomach itself: fortunately, there is a regeneration mechanism that continuously recreates the internal mucosa of the stomach. Within 24 hours, the gastric mucosa (consumed on one side and recreated on the other) is completely new.

The problem of gastritis occurs when this mechanism stops working: if, for some reason, too much acid is produced or if the regeneration is not effective, the corrosion of the stomach overcomes the regeneration, which affects the deeper layers where there are blood vessels and nerves, causing severe pain as well as damage.

Gastritis may be due primarily to problems with the food:  rotten, toxic (for example an inedible mushroom) or indigestible material such as plastic. In this case, the pain will last as long as the food remains in the stomach, and is then generally expelled through vomiting, the stomach's defense mechanism.

There are also microorganisms that can cause gastritis as a primary effect; most bacteria and viruses are digested, just like meat, but some manage to resist and cause damage to the stomach wall, so that it becomes inflamed. Regeneration fails and we come across gastritis. In this case, solving it is more complex because it requires the intervention of a veterinarian to carry out a therapy with antibiotics suitable for killing these pathogenic microorganisms.

Drug abuse is another possibility that can lead to gastritis. Medicines, especially anti-inflammatories that we and our pets take when we have pain of any kind, ruin the stomach wall because they stimulate acid secretions. If the animal takes too many or if it takes human drugs (always ask the veterinarian for advice before giving one of our medicines to our dog or cat) this mechanism could be triggered which could cause gastritis. Clearly, it is important not to keep giving these medicines to our four-legged friend, because we would increase its pain.

The most serious situations of gastritis occur when there are other concomitant and difficult diseases to treat: among these, renal failure, liver failure and some types of tumours. In this case, gastritis is not a primary problem, but one of the many consequences of these situations: they clearly need to be resolved, but gastritis can be a wake-up call to understand that such problems exist, and report them to our veterinarian.

How to notice gastritis

How is gastritis detected? The main symptom is vomiting, possibly with the presence of some blood. Let's always look at it before cleaning it.

He does not play, moves little, does not eat, and if the pain is so much he could put himself in a particular position, called "Muslim prayer" (which recalls the particular posture in which Muslims pose when they pray): front legs forward, head close to the floor and rear raised.

If we have any doubts, we can lightly massage the animal's belly: if it has pain, it will tend to "close up like a hedgehog" and in some cases, it will try to scratch and bite us.

If this situation continues over time, it is good to take him for a visit, which will certainly help him. He feels a lot of pain.

 Leishmaniasis is probably one of the most well known diseases in dogs. The information we often hear is a bit mixed up. For example, we often hear about the vaccine, or that mosquitoes pass it, but that's not true. It is also said to be a bacterium, and it is not.

So let's go to dispel some myths, and try to understand the functioning of one of the most complex and difficult diseases to treat in animals.

What it is and how it is transmitted

When it comes to Leishmania, it is already difficult to try to explain what it is.

Among the eukaryotic organisms (those who eat in order to have energy) we find five kingdoms: Animals, Plants, Fungi, Bacteria and Protists. You will probably know some organisms such as the first four kingdoms, but none of the last. The Leishmania is a protist. We can see it as a middle ground between a bacterium and a very, very simple animal.

It is a microorganism visible only under a microscope, which is injected into the blood of the dog or cat (also in humans, but does very little damage) by an insect.

The insect is a phlebotomist, which is smaller than a mosquito, similar to a gnat.

If this insect bites an infected dog, the dog will become infected as well. Leishmania has two forms: one mobile and one immobile. In the dog's organism there is the second one, the immobile one, which once it reaches the phlebotomist's intestine becomes mobile. It goes up, reaches the proboscis (the sting, in short), and is injected into the blood where, having the possibility to move, multiplies and spreads throughout the body, and then becomes immobile again.

What does it do

If you have had trouble understanding what Leishmania is, understanding why it causes the disease is even more complex. Bacteria generally "eat" into the dog's body at its expense. Leishmania does not.

As soon as the parasite has entered the body, it is "eaten" by the white blood cells, which try to digest it in order to destroy it. Unfortunately, he manages to survive this digestion and multiplies.

The organism therefore tries to fight it through antibodies; particular proteins, which once attached to a pathogenic organism, make the white blood cells “eaters” (macrophages) understand that they must eat that organism. But, as we have already said, they cannot digest it and destroy it.

The antibodies attached to a part of the Leishmania start spinning freely in the organism, then deposit themselves in particular points. For example in the eye and cause problems with sight, in the skin and give desquamation (the typical leishmania dandruff), in the joints, and cause problems when the dog or cat walk. However, they also deposit around the blood vessels, veins and arteries, whose walls are damaged causing very small but widespread blood loss.

Eventually they settle in the kidney, giving rise to kidney failure, which is one of the worst consequences of the disease.

All of this leads to a state of severe dejection, fever, movement problems and even worse consequences over time. However, this whole process is characterized by being very slow.

In some cases, among other things, only some of these symptoms occur, not all: we must be very careful and if we see any of the signs described above, take the dog or cat to a vet, who will look for a solution to the problem.

How is it treated and how Is it prevented

Lehismania is very difficult to cure. It is resistant in the animal's body, so the drugs do not work optimally; the therapy is symptomatic, therefore drugs are given that allow to solve the symptoms that the disease causes one by one.

However, the parasite is never eliminated, and remains in the organism for life, so any concomitant disease would risk a relapse, among other things always worse than the previous episode.

As for prevention, there are some vaccines against Leishmania, but their effectiveness is still rather doubtful, and they dont always work.

The main solution should be prevention at the root, i.e. avoiding the phlebotomist sting. We can do this by avoiding very humid places rich in mosquitoes (therefore also sand flies) and providing our dog with repellent collars or special products to be distributed on the back to avoid the approach of the insect and everything that follows.

By avoiding the sting, we will safeguard the health of our dog and avoid the transmission of the disease to other animals.