Homer Update

Mike and I met with Homer's vet this evening. After reviewing the urine sample, there's no doubt that Homer is in the later part of stage 1 or early part of stage 2 of kidney renal disfunction. The vet said that with a change in diet, Homer may still be around for another couple years. With that said, Homer is now on Purina KidNey Function (KN) dog food. It's a prescription food that Homer should be able to digest better without putting a strain on his kidneys. Homer will have another blood test at the end of this month to check his liver and kidney levels. Right now his liver enzymes are a tad elevated so our vet would like to make sure they are okay after a few weeks of being off the medication he was on for the last four weeks.

Here's what we learned about the disease (from Purina): Kidney disease - A progressive, but usually manageable disorder.

It's estimated that 9 in every 1,000 dogs and 16 in every 1,000 cats suffer from kidney disease. Although kidney disease can occur in dogs and cats of all ages, it is usually a disease of older pets. For pets with chronic renal failure, the mean age of diagnosis was 7 years for dogs and 7.4 years for cats.

Since kidney disease is usually a progressive disorder, involving the loss of adequate function over a period of months to years, the disease cannot be cured. However, medical treatment and dietary management can help reduce or eliminate symptoms and make pets more comfortable.

The down side of everything, is we have a huge bin of Homer's old food in our basement that we can no longer feed to him.