Natural Remedies for Managing Chronic Renal Failure in Pets

Dear Rukmini, try food grade diatomaceous earth (DE) for your cat. Companies in U.S. Sell it, but one website in particular has many impressive testimonials for both cats and dogs (and people), and they send it out internationally. It's inexpensive to buy, though shipping is not inexpensive. DE has clay in it, which is known to absorb and eliminate toxins from the body. Our dog had kidney failure from Lyme disease. She would lick and lick a particular spot of earth in the backyard. I now know she was trying to ingest clay, which I've since learned animals often do when they're unwell. Try mixing a tsp. of DE into her food. If she won't take it that way, dust it on her fur; she'll lick it off. Low protein food is standard protocol for kidney issues. Coconut oil is also said to be helpful for the kidneys and liver. Try mixing a tsp. of it also into her food. Again, if she refuses it, apply it to her fur; she'll lick it off. Aloe is good for digestive issues, though the fresh pulp can be bitter. Taste some yourself and see. It's worth a try for your cat, but at a separate time from the coconut oil and DE. We learned about coconut oil on Earth Clinic; since then have read more. I'm sure both DE and coconut oil will help your cat. Thank you, Earth Clinic.

My cat, Chaki, has been diagnosed with CRF. I have been reading about pet remedies on your site. There have been reccomendations for a particular brand of Aloe Vera, which is not available in India. Can I give her a tiny bit of fresh aloe vera pulp from the plant which I have in a pot? I can put it into her food and should camouflage nicely. If so how much of it should I give? Chaki is in CRF but not yet acute. Would be most grateful for some info on this. - Rukmini

How do you get the animal to drink the water with the the ACV in it?

Hi there

I'm from South Africa. My dog had a blood transfusion on Monday 21st November 2011. The vet says she is very pale & perhaps she is anemic & can't produce much red blood cells. This could be a cause from tick bite fever as well. She lost weight, gums became whitish yellow & she also lost her appetite, her belly staryed to swell as well.

Due to her being old, 11 years old the vet say her kidneys are failing & heart is under so much strain.

Can dandelion resolve any of the above? What can help produce or increase red blood cells, what can reduce the high ammonia levels for liver damage?

SOS, please help & please provide your contact numbers and country so I can call you, this can help us all.

Regards, Prishen

27325358081 (H)

27828533730 (M)

South Africa, Durban

Hello,

My cat diagnoised CRF problably 4 yrs ago. She has been on a prescript diet since and doing fairly well. Recently she started getting upset stomaches daily. Shes on a pepcid med. Morning and night and a medication for her upset stomach. Recently I decided (due to this post) that I would add 3 ml. aloe vera juice to 1/2 cup of water. As well as, quarter teaspoon of slippery elm bark on her can food. It seemed to help a little in the first couple of day's. By day 4 and 5 it seemed to help a great deal. It not only stopped the lip smacking and upset ness and throwing up but now a week later she is laying more comfortable. No longer is she a loaf of bread or "meat loaf" position. Her legs our stretched out. She hasn't thrown up in a week. I hope this helps others out there. This site certainly helped me. Thank you.

@Gail from Colorado Springs, Colorado

Well done for taking such good care of your dog. I just wanted to say please look into the benefits of wholegrain brown rice and bread. White rice and flour/bread are so refined there is no nourishment in them and they will do more harm than good in anyone's diet.

Best wishes, Fi

You might want to try adding wheatgrass (1 scoop of Powder) the product is called "Amazing Grass". This powder is like non other and kept in the freezer. Also add 2-3ml of organic aloe vera to very good food (the best you can get in your location) mix with about a half can of the best food in the morning. Then get the best dry food and leave in the dish for your dog. This has made an incredible difference in our dog, I hope it helps for you.

Sorry.... Saw that you HAD written the ACV dosage in your post, I just missed it. But then another question: how did you decide on this dosage? Some ppl have tried 50:50, some say 5-7 drops in half a litre of water is safe coz too much can CAUSE kidney stones by pushing the urine's ph too far in the opposite direction... There is too much variation for me to know what might be beneficial for my cat. Anyone can clear this up for me?

Thank you

Doesn't the ASPCA list of plants toxic to cats include aloe? Other websites also say not to let a cat eat aloe. How come contributors to this discussion say aloe actually helps their cat? I'm a little worried about trying it...

What dosage of ACV did you use? how much diluted in what amount of water/food?

Thank you
Adelynn

My baby is a 14 year old mix breed cat. The vet said a few months ago she had kidney failure, gave her special food and didn't know how long she'd last. I put her on a different grain-free food and forced liquids into her. She recovered quickly, but her eyes have been red and she gets that black gunk in the inner corners. After some experimentation it appears that chlorophyll capsules dumped into wet grain-free cat food with extra water added, goat milk, and a raw chicken liver every few days are doing her very well. The liver seems to be helping the eyes the most. Possibly she's anemic. Each item is given on alternate days, and she has free access to grain-free dry food and water. She used to sit next to the water dish with her chin over it, sipping now and then. She doesn't do that anymore. She's a bit wobbly on her hind legs. I'm going to try adding basil to the food and giving the milk with it. She was severely constipated a few weeks ago which hairball remedy did not help, but Miralax cleared. I didn't have to take her to the vet for it. I'd like to give her digestive enzymes to see if it helps. I also minced up dandelion leaves into her wet food for a few days. She liked that. I cut the stems out of the leaves at first.

I'd like to hear what you did for your dog's rattlesnake bite.

Chlorophyll and raw liver helped cat's rapid deterioration

My 15 year old indoor cat was sleeping a lot, thin, lethargic, not eating or drinking, sitting with her chin over the water dish a lot, had difficulty urinating/defecating. Previously the vet said her kidneys were failing and she had to have special vet-only kd formula food. After reading the ingredients in the expensive kd (they were of poor quality) I bought a no-grain food, which she did very well on for a few months. She regained energy and her coat became very fluffy and clean, she put on weight. A few new cats came to live with her and she got sick again, don't know if there's a corelation. I made her drink yogurt, aloe juice, garlic powder, turmeric, basil, a variety of MSM gel, apple cidar vinegar. I mixed the above variously into a couple tablespoons of yogurt and made her drink it from a medicine dropper. She resisted, but if you hold her on her back and press the dropper into the back corner of her mouth she has to swallow it. It didn't seem to do much other than keep her hydrated, so probably plain yogurt and MSM would be the only thing to give. I tried those things because I figured her digestion was messed up somehow, and she had the same symptoms the vet called kidney failure and dehydration. Additionally, I mixed a chlorophyll supplement I'd been taking into her water bowl, and some aloe juice with citric acid into another. She improved overnight. But she would sit with her chin over the water bowl and started getting an infection under her chin from the damp chlorophyll caking into her fur. I took away the chlorophyll water and her health declined again, so I started giving it to her mixed into tuna juice instead, so she drinks it all right away. I quit giving her the yogurt after I noticed the dramatic improvement from the chlorophyll (about 4 days). Once a day/every-other-day I break open a capsule and stir it into a dish of tuna juice, the water kind - not the oil kind, don't give the oil, they say it interferes with vitamin E or something... (Press the juice out of the tuna and set the tuna aside. Don't get the tuna that has broth in the ingredient list, broth is supposedly one of the ways they hide glutamic acid (think MSG) in things. You might want to get the low sodium kind, too. She's had both. She drinks almost a whole can's worth of juice.)She also turned her nose up at raw beef and chicken while she was sick, but she gobbled up raw chicken liver, especially the blood as if she was starving. Raw chicken liver is cheap. They say chlorophyll is like hemoglobin, so maybe that's why it works for her. She's been on the chlorophyll for a month or so now. Her eyes have that black crust on the inner corners, and one eye was watering tonight. But she's going about with her tail up lately (she never was perky, so the tail up is a vast improvement) and comes to the door when I arrive. She also seemed to have a soreness to her hips or lower abdomen which is much improved. I'm going to keep giving it to her for a while, but I have to figure out a way to get her to ingest it without the tuna juice, don't know if that much tuna juice is healthy. She may have been a victim of the tainted pet food, she first got sick shortly after that all happened. Her reflexes and allertness seem to have improved as well, better than before she got sick, even. They say only give raw liver a few times a week because of all the vitamin A in it, or something. She won't eat the chlorophyll if I mix it into gravy or chicken broth, so far just tuna juice.

Thank you so much for George's Aloe Vera suggestion for my cat with kidney disfunction. I bought it this morning and have given it to her 3 times today - 3 ml each time - and she has been minimally eating and drinking for the first time in three days. Baby is 15 and has been diagnosed with kidney dysfunction (a nice way of saying "failure" I guess) and hyperthyroidism.

In February, I took my 14 1/2 year old miniature dachshund in for a dental cleaning. After running pre-surgical blood work, x-rays and ultrasound, it was discovered one of her kidneys was incredibly enlarged due to cysts and infection. Her kidney was removed and she was doing fine. Two weeks after her surgery she stopped eating and drinking, was vomiting and lethargic. She was in chronic renal failure with a BUN >130 and Creatinine of 5.4. The only option left was hospitalizing her for 36 hours of IV fluids and if it worked it may need to be repeated possibly every week. Due to her age, the fact that she had a bad back, she becomes stressed spending the night in the clinic and all she had already been through, I took her home. I wanted to keep her as comfortable as possible and decided to research Earth Clinic (which I religiously use for myself). I began Peggy's Aloe Vera Juice remedy at 2-3 ml's twice per day as well as 1 tsp ACV in her water (I used a syringe to force her to drink for the first couple of days). Within a couple of days she had stopped vomiting and began eating wet food mixed with baby food and drinking again. I continued the 2-3 ml's twice per day for appx. 1 month during which time she began eating normal amounts of wet and dry food. While continuing to eat and drink normally with no vomiting since the initial episodes, I put her on a maintenance of 2-3 ml of Aloe Vera Juice once per day. Two months later her Creatinine is down to 3.8, she's doing great and the vet was shocked. Thank you so much Peggy, if it weren't for you I don't think our little Sophie would be with us anymore!!

We are in Galicia, Spain and are urgently requesting some info. about DMSO. Our dog is in kidney failure. He is being treated by a vet, but he will die soon if we do not try sometime else. We want to try to treat him with DMSO. Does anyone know where we can get some here?

Thank you for any help you can offer.

My 10 yo choc lab was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease about 8 mos ago. The vet put him on the prescription diet KD. He was on that for about 4 weeks and had to go back for blood work. The vet said there was slight changes and to keep him on this food. He said I would start to notice changes in my dog in about 6 mos time and that this disease usually ends a dogs life within 18 mos. I searched the internet and read hour after hour and decided to try a diet I had seen several times on different posts.

This is the combination:

1 cup cooked white rice, 1 lb cooked ground beef with a higher fat content, 1 cooked boiled egg, 1 slice of white bread. Mix together. For my choc lab who is about 75 lbs, I give 2 cups twice a day. I also give him one omega 3 fish oil capsule once a day. I have also now started to incorporate cut up green beans with the mix.

When he started out, his breath smelled of urine and his coat was dull and the hair was coming out in clumps. 8 mos later, he no longer smells of urine, his coat is shiny and no hair loss. He eats like a horse and plays with his toys again. He has shown no signs of kidney failure up to this point when he should be starting to show signs of the disease according to the vet. I am hopeful that continuing on this diet will keep him healthy. This is my experience and I hope it helps others as well.

Hello,

I read about the vita-mix for cats that has CRF and I would like to try it on my cat too. Is vita-mix a brand? If not, which brands of supplements manufacturers make that? Thanks!

Here's an update on my cat with CRF who I have been giving the Vita-Mix to for almost two months now. I do not give her the full dose I actually cut back to a couple of times a week instead of daily. The results are: She has gained weight, hasn't had a bad urinary infection, seems more social, has bouts of energy, I have been able to cut back on her antibiotics and I have also been able to cut back on her Sub Q injections, overall I would say she is doing great.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

My 12 year old domestic short-hair cat, Roscoe, was diagnosed with CRF 3 weeks ago. After spending 4 days in the hospital, we brought her home and started her on the doctor prescribed kidney-friendly food. After 2 weeks of her showing a strong appetite, she suddenly started vomiting and showed no interest in food or water. She also seemed to be very uncomfortable and I noticed she was going to her litterbox often but not doing anything. After searching online, I found a post on your website written 3/16/2009 by Peggy McAllister regarding the use of aloe vera juice for her cat with CRF to help with both nausea and constipation. I took Peggy's advice and bought the aloe vera juice at my local health food store (I even sought out George's - the brand Peggy recommended as it is additive free and doesn't need to be refrigerated) and it worked like a charm! I mixed 2 1/2 ml in Roscoe's food twice a day (once in the morning and again in the evening). After only one day on the aloe, she had a bowel movement and started eating and drinking again.
I just want to thank Peggy and Earth Clinic for providing the information I needed to help Roscoe get better. It's emotionally very difficult to treat a beloved pet's serious illness, but having resources like this make things a lot easier. Thanks again!

I just lost my Chinese Sharpei to kidney failure. They aren't sure why. his kidneys failed but they think it was lyme disease. I have 2 other sharpei's. What can I do to help out the kidneys of my other dogs? Also, if your dog was diagnosed with kidney failure what would you do to try & restore them as best as possible & if our dogs have the lyme disease in their body what can we do to reverse it. Some people have said that the dry dog foods are no good no matter how expensive they are. They believe that dry dog food may have contributed to his kidney failure. My understanding is that Sharpei's are know for kidney failure. Please advise. Thank you

I have never been able to hide any liquid in my cat's water. He always seems to sense something is in his water. I will try this, though. If anyone has suggestions let me know.

ALOE VERA JUICE FOR gastric upset:

My cat was diagnosed last year with chronic renal failure. And one of the most challenging issues has been his vomiting. I have been giving him fluids on a regular basis, but because renal failure affects the acid in his gut, he would go through some periods of serious projectile vomiting. His gut would be gurgling all the time, and for months, I tried using Famotidine from the vet with little success. Then I tried George's Aloe Vera juice (it has no preservatives like benzoic acid which is poisonous to cats)...and this cat who was throwing up at least once a day has not vomited in three weeks! I give him 2-3 ml in the morning and the same dose at night. Of all the Aloe Vera's. George's seems to be the best...no taste (tastes to me like water), and you don't have to refrigerate it. Available at Whole Foods and probably other natural food staores as well.

This cat's health was going downhill fast, and since the vomiting has turned around, he's gaining weight again and seems MUCH happier (who wouldn't?)

I believe this would have greatly helped my other cat who had hyperthyroid and would vomit whenever her stomach was empty.

My mom has a twenty pound dog that is suffering from kidney issues. She is willing to try this for her dog but it doesn't state how much of either to give. We don't know what or where to get colloidal silver and at what amount. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you.

i wrote back in april, about my cat and puppy that had eaten some of the tainted iams canned food. their kidney readings indicated a problem. i told the vet i would treat them myself, come back for a retest in a month. i gave them both water with acv, and colloidal silver through the month. the results for both came back clean..again..acv rules!

Thank you all for sharing your positive experiences with ACV and cats. My 23 year old cat was diagnosed with renal (kidney) failure & the vet wanted to put him on KD cat food & medication, or put him to sleep. I decided to try the AVC by 1st rubbing some on the back of his neck & then adding 1/4 tsp. to his 1 cup of daily water. Within 4 hours he went from not eating,drinking or urinating to doing all of the above! My prayers were answered!

First of all, I would like to thank the owner/founder and independent contributor for this wonderful site, along with all those those who have provided valuable feedback concerning folk remedies.

Our senior cat Pepper who is about 15 years old developed problems over a year ago, which started with listlessness, loss of appetite/drinking and vomiting. We took her to a Vet and was informed that she was not drinking enough and needed to be rehydrated, so she was kept overnight at the clinic for tests and was rehydrated by IV. The Vet later informed us that because of her age her kidneys were failing and tests showed they were in poor shape, he also said she would need to be on medication and a low protein diet which could only be purchased at the clinic.

After the awful ordeal of having to pop a pill down her throat every day, she showed no improvement and her symtoms actually got worse and she was deteriorating faster and was looking like a bone rack. I tried every kind of food to try to tempt her to eat but she would only eat about a teaspoon of food. It was very upsetting to see her so ill and thin so I returned to the Vet who told me that the kindest thing I could do was to put her to sleep. :( My family and I decided not to go that route and brought her back home.

After extensive researching on the net I found that others pets had gotten worse from this medication so I stopped giving it to her.

I also learned online that dandelion leaves were great for flushing the kidneys and body of toxins, so I started giving her a fresh one from the garden and chopping and mixing some through her soft food.

With the help of organic baby food and a fresh dandelion leaf daily, she slowly regained her appetite and stopped vomiting and was drinking lots of water.

A year later she has now fully regained her weight and is eating her regular crunchies and soft food and has a healthy appetite. The only thing now is she drinks huge amounts of water which I was told was the bodies way of flushing toxins out of the system which is due to her age and failing kidneys.

Two weeks ago she got a bladder infection and was straining to uninate but was only passing small drops, so I reseached the net and found EARTH CLINIC, after one day of giving her organic apple cider vinegar in her soft food and drinking bowl she started to unrinate and has been fine since.

"Another one of mother earths natural remedies"

We are now keeping Pepper on the apple cider vinegar perminately and our new kitten also.

Quess what? she is now also starting to drink normal amounts of water. :D

Thank you again for this wonderful site.
I hope my feedback also helps others.

P.S In winter I add dried dandelion root to Peppers soft food which I purchase in my health food store.

We add 1/2 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to her soft food and 1/2 a teaspoon to two cups of her drinking water every day.

fresh dandelion half of one small leaf from my garden chopped up fine and added to soft food three times a week, in winter 1/2 a capsule of dried dandelion root.

If you can't get your cat to eat the fresh leaf, try putting about 5 drops of dandelion liquid tinture in a full bowl of drinking water.

IMPORTANT!!!!
Don't ever administer full strenth cider vinegar or dandelion root directly into your pets mouth.
This would choke them.

Hi Just some further thoughts about Cyberpunk's amazing recovery. I use organic chicken livers but have been unsuccessful getting organic chicken hearts so just buy the gizzard/ hearts package at the grocery store. Stater Bros. has whiting available (wild caught) in a package at a reasonable price, also frozen whole talapia. The Azodyl is expensive and I think the NSI's Friendly Fiber would do the same thing but I am unwilling to experiment with Punky's health at this point. If any of your readers need help with setting this diet up and live in the So Cal area, I would be willing to assist. I cured my 10 yr old Golden of a double rattlesnake bite, if you guys would be interested in that. Best Wishes,

Hi Just wanted to update the info I sent the other day re: Cyberpunk. He continues to do so well! His coat is beautiful. I think I miswrote what I put in his water. I use 2 water bowls, one with a drop of hydrogen peroxide and one with 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp ACV. He accepts both just fine. I want to gradually increase amounts. Best wishes