I have 4 male (neutered) labs with high creatine levels. 8 yr old with 1.60 normal BUN, 7 yr old with 1.60 normal BUN, and two litter mates 5 yr old with 1.60 and 1.70 normal BUN all fasted 12 hr b/f blood.

Two others (not owned by me) females (spayed) also have high creatine levels one is a sister to the 8 yr old and the other is a offspring to the 8 yr old.

High normal is 1.30.

I feed taste of the wild no grain food. They are all related. My 10 yr old female has normal blood work and is fed the same.

Any ideas?

Lots of questions to your questions come to mind. These are Labradors, not greyhounds, right, as greyhounds have different creatinine bloodwork values, I seem to remember rescuers telling me years ago. What does your vet say? Are these the only abnormal values and the rest normal, so not a real worry yet? On the dogs with high creatinine levels, is the BUN also elevated or is it normal? How did the urinalysis come out? Normal or not? Any possibility that the dog needed more water, was stressed and panting, slightly dehydrated at vet clinic where blood was drawn? Was bloodwork right after a monthly medication? When are you repeating the bloodwork on the dogs with abnormal results?

If it had only been the 4 yr old, I would have thought that he grew up on the recalled foods of 2007. If only speutered dogs have abnormal readings, consider changing their food to one with less ash, maybe something along the lines of Before Grain, or dumb the food down with white rice, potatoes, or corn meal as one does for kidney failure dogs, keeping food lower in protein, phosphorus, purines and other residue. Or if they are on the fish and smoked fish version version of TOTW, change varieties at least. I have to wonder if adding boiled, smashed plain potatoes would help as encouraging more water drinking. That being said, the main thing is, what does your vet say?

Sue, I don't understand the numbers you posted. They look more like creatinine values than BUN (blood urea nitrogen) values. Of course, every lab standardizes normal slightly differently.

Elevated BUN is not especially specific about the problem. It suggests possible kidney failure, but many other things can elevate BUN. For example, elevated BUN may also be due to a condition that results in decreased blood flow to the kidneys (such as congestive heart failure, shock, stress, recent heart attack, or severe burns) or to conditions that cause obstruction of urine flow, or to dehydration.
BUN concentrations may be elevated when there is excessive protein breakdown (catabolism), significantly increased protein in the diet, or gastrointestinal bleeding (because of the proteins present in the blood).

Do the dogs have any symptoms of kidney disease, such
as poor appetite, blood in the urine, dilute urine, fatigue, etc. And find out, for sure, if you are talking about BUN or creatinine values. Kate

Sue,

High creatinine is always linked to kidney failure, but in your case, what comes to mind, is excessive protein intake/dehydration.
I'm thinking that they have not ingested any toxic chemicals (i.e. antifreeze)and are otherwise completely healthy with a normal urinalysis.
You might want to try a diet with less protein and see what happens.
High prairie and wetlands have 32% protein.
Sierra mountain and Pacific stream have 25% protein.
Which one are you feeding?
Monitor water intake/urination. Color of urine. food intake. Fatigue.
I would re-test all the affected in a month or so after reducing the protein level in the diet.

I am talking about the creatine level and they are labradors. Urinalysis was done at the same time of blood on all dog and every one was normal. My vet said to just keep any eye on them since everyone is doing so good and re check blood and urinalysis every 6 months.

Every thing else on the blood work was normal.

I do know this is very normal for greyhounds. I just want to see if anyone else had any other info or insight to this.

Lower the protein ratio in the diet.

Sue, were all these creatinine levels drawn on the same day and/or sent to the same lab? Whenever I see lab values that don't quite make sense, I think about it being a bad day at the lab. Of course, you would not really expect symptoms with such a small elevation of creatinine. I'd personally do what your vet suggested--vigilant watching without really changing anything. Kate

All were sent out to the same local lab different days.

Hmmm. Puzzling. Kind of hard to believe that all those dogs have the inital stages of kidney failure.

What version of TOTW do you feed? Some versions do have a pretty high protein level.

Just a thought but do you feed your food dry??
As in no water on the food?

I feed a grain free food, but all of my dogs get water in the bowl enough to cover the food and I let it sit for a minute before feeding.I've fed this way for years given the thinking (on my part) that if they have to pull in large quanities of fluids from their bodies to digest the dry food that if I didn't add water it could leave them semi dehydrated. They drink just as much water as they did before I started doing this.

I went thru this with 5 dogs during the food recalls (rice gluten from china).

My food was recalled and i went right to grain free food. blood draws had elevated BUN and creatinine on all dogs.

My vet felt that they being moved to a high protein food caused this. we stayed on the food and redid bloodwork 4 wks later and all dogs were normal.

It takes the body time to learn to break down the higher protein.

as mentioned in the above post, water is important for a dog to break down the higher protein so the kibble should be fed with water added to aid in digesting the hi protein.

I personally would not wait 6 months to retest.

If you recently switched to the hi protein food I would retest in 4-6 wks.

Good luck and prayers levels are normal on next blood draw.

My seven year old boy has an elevated creatinine after being on a high protien diet, I switched him back to his lower protien food and retested his kidney values six weeks later and they went back to normal. Eight weeks after that he got very sick, ran a battery of tests including an
ACTH Stim test and ultrasound...he was diagnosed with Addison's disease. Thanks to great supportive care and Percortin he is doing great! Addison's disease is called the "great imitater" because it imitates other diseases....just something to keep in the back of your mind. My boy went from just missing a meal one day to near death in a matter of a couple of days......

Thanks I will add water to the food. I do rotate the different types of TOTW food but most of the time they get the bison and I have been feeding TOTW for 2-3 yrs now.

Sue, unless you have been restricting water, you probably will get little benefit from putting water on or near the food. Dogs will seek the amount of water they need to process food.

However, many high protein diets are low in fiber. Adding fiber may aid your dogs in processing high protein diets. In the wild animals eat not only the flesh of animals but also the fur and bones and other fibrous parts of a carcass. Check the fiber content of TOTW.

At the same time, I would be worried about the possibility that you are seeing the beginning of kidney failure in these dogs. In humans a high protein diet is avoided if the human has the beginning of kidney failure. A high protein diet doesn't seem to be harmful to people who have normal kidney function.

On the other hand, I have not given up the notion that something is wrong with your lab results. Maybe recalibration is needed for a particular device used to
process the blood for the creatinine test. Retresting (at a different lab) is always a good idea for test results that just don't seem to make sense.