My dog had diarrhea. Can dehydration raise kidney enzyme levels?

Your veterinarian is correct that it could be related to the diet and some dehydration. You definitely should follow up with another blood test in three months or have a different kind of test called an SDMA. The SDMA will catch kidney disease well before there is an increase in the kidney enzymes levels. Talk to your veterinarian about this option. The most important thing is to catch kidney disease early. Best of luck and please feel free to post any additional questions.

Hi there! After looking at the lab results, I see that all of these are extremely minor changes - they usually don't mean anything at all, in a dog that's clinically healthy and acting normal. The one possible exception would be the elevated BUN, as this can sometimes be a sign of early kidney disease - but it can also be caused by mild dehydration (common in anxious dogs who are panting at the vet's office!), a high-protein diet, or other things that don't have any clinical significance. If you wanted to be sure that his kidneys are fine, your veterinarian could do a urinalysis to make sure that his urine is appropriately concentrated and doesn't contain protein or any other abnormalities. The other values will often be slightly variable from one patient to another, and should not be any cause for concern.

If her SDMA is normal and her creatinine is wnl then her kidneys are likely normal. BUN can be increased from dehydration, a stomach ulcer, a high protein diet or a very muscular physique. You would normally see vomiting or black stool if she had a bleeding ulcer so I doubt this is the cause of the high BUN. To ensure her kidneys are okay, I would talk to your vet about checking a urinalysis on her. Your vet will assess her protein levels and specific gravity to see how her kidneys are functioning. If the protein levels look high on the dipstick and there isn't an infection, I would talk to your vet about doing a urinary protein creatinine ratio. If it is elevated it could be challenging the kidneys and can cause future problems. There is a medicine to help called benazepril. You can also switch her to a prescription kidney diet just because they have a much lower protein content than the food over the counter. Some dogs just naturally have a higher BUN and as long as it isn't progressively getting worse, I would just continue to monitor it. I hope this helps!

If your vet isn't worried about Kodiak, I would not be worried either. Slightly elevated creatinine can also be due to dehydration, so it could be that he may be dehydrated caused this elevation. A slight elevation isn't a cause for worry when other values are normal and there aren't any other concerning physical signs. To get him to drink more water, I'd consider adding canned food to his diet. It has a higher moisture content, and you can mix it in with his dry food. You would have to cut back on his dry food to a little to account for adding in the wet food, so ask his vet for the correct ratio. The other option is to add a bit of low sodium chicken broth to his dry dog food to get extra moisture into his diet. I hope this helps.

Oscar's lab work is pointing to both liver and kidney issues. Unfortunately it's impossible to tell if this is truly a kidney problem or just dehydration secondary to other issues (not eating, not drinking, losing fluids through vomiting and diarrhea) without knowing the specific gravity of his urine. Possible causes these values could include liver diseases like viral or bacterial hepatitis, cancer of one or more abdominal organs (liver and kidney), or the bacterial disease leptospirosis. Unfortunately it's impossible to say for sure how to treat Oscar without more testing, and based on just these values alone. At the very least IV fluids may help to treat either dehydration or kidney disease, so you can talk to your veterinarian about starting there, but ultimately there are more questions to be answered.

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Nyla. The diarrhea is unlikely related to her kidney disease. If it continues though, she will need to see her veterinarian. It will be easier for her to become dehydrated given her kidney disease. I hope this information helps!

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. Technically, we have to have a urine concentration to know for sure if the kidneys are affected. Those values (urea and creat) could have been caused by mild dehydration. If so, the kidneys are fine. If the urine is dilute and watery, then yes I am worried more about kidney damage. Talk to your vet about checking the concentration (USG) of the first urine of the morning. Best of luck to you and Max!