Elderly dog ( greyhound) has chronic kidney disease. What is your experience of this please?

[Busywithsomething]

Hi my family always had dogs as I was growing up. In the main they all lead long-ish healthy lives. Our greyhound of 11, (which I accept is quite a good age for the breed), has started weeing in the night, occasionally also pooing and drinking more. Diagnosed as kidney disease. I joined a facebook group about it and they all seem to understand what blood tests are saying and I don't follow it.

Can you please let me have your experiences, comments etc? We had a week i n Suffolk where all seemed good again, bar the vomiting once or twice, but home again now and he seems very lethargic. More blood tests booked for 10 days' time.

Any comments, info would be great. Thanks.

My last dog had renal failure and lived another 2 - 3 years in good health after diagnosis. She was 17 when she died.

We opted not to go down the diet route as she was a picky eater anyway and it's pretty unpalatable. So we just lived life until her organs began to fail and she had a seizure.

She honestly was really happy until the last few weeks and I don't think she noticed.

I used to care for a dog with renal failure. He was on a special diet but honestly, it didn't make much difference and his owners just opted to keep him comfortable. In the end, he had a stroke and they had him put to sleep. He had a wonderful life and avoided spending his final days in and out of the vets, which I think is important.

Ultimately once their kidneys start to fail its' only a matter of time. You could switch diets but honestly, I would be tempted to do what @Newpeep did and just keep him going until he shows that he's had enough.

Just to add our vet was in full agreement. He said that it was more important they ate rather than they didn't eat special food and it is just a case of old age unless there is an obvious chemical reason for it (poisoning). She was still walking miles until her last year then enjoyed life at a more leisurely pace quite literally until the day before she died.

I also have cats and have seen that happen in the same way but with cats it tends to be more acute and they do suffer more than our dog did. Maybe it's less easy to tell they are ill as they are not as active as dogs but it wasn't what I expected given my experience with cats in the same condition.

@Newpeep , thanks for your advice. To be fair, our dog has always had a good appetite and even since starting to switch him onto the renal diet kibble, he still wolfs his meals down and scrounges more from us whenever we're making food for ourselves. Despite a good appetite though he has really slowed down lately and needs to go out at all kinds of odd times of night. And what I'm unsure about is the need to do regular? blood tests or wee tests. On the facebook group I joined, which seems to be predominately Americans, they're all deeply into the creatin levels or Bun levels or something and I don't know what they're talking about. I guess I'll have to ask the vet to put it all in simple terms to me when we're there next. Do you follow these test scores?