Dottiesyrky, my dog lived with CRF for over three years, so I did a lot of research and reading and belonged to several groups. I don't have any stats, but I can tell you that, while it's not common, we saw lots of members come through the groups with very young pups with kidney disease. There were a few pups that had kidney failure due to ingesting a toxin, a few that developed kidney disease secondary to another illness such as lepto or tick born diseases, but the majority (which was still a small number of dogs) were born with congenital issues that affected their kidneys, such as juvenile renal dysplasia or polycystic kidney disease. Generally, most of the pups under one year were diagnosed with juvenile renal dysplasia which was eventually diagnosed with ultrasound. Polycystic kidney disease can also be diagnosed with an ultrasound. We also saw a lot of fairly young dogs aged 4-5-6 come through with chronic renal failure, so it's likely those dogs also had some congenital condition that caused the kidney disease. It seemed to be a crapshoot as to how well the very young dogs fared with the disease, but it seemed that most lived to age 2 to 4 with treatment. I can't even imagine how heartbreaking it would be to fall in love with a puppy and find out at six months old that it was in renal failure.
My Scooby was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease at age 8, but he was probably born with it. PKD eventually progresses to chronic kidney failure, but his progressed very slowly and he did not develop CRF until he was about 13. We were lucky that his CRF also progressed very slowly, and we had him for another three + years after he was diagnosed.
Hope this helps a bit.
Diana |