In January of 1990, I had my twenty-one month old Standard Poodle puppy put down. All three of the puppies with the disease appeared healthy and grew normally until clinical signs appeared at ten months in one, and twenty months in the other two. She died two weeks after being diagnosed. The disease is devastating. The prognosis is dismal.
Nobody expects to lose a puppy of that age.
I have been collecting information since her death on the disease that killed her. Despite the fact that several articles on Juvenile Renal Disease and Familial Renal Disease were published in veterinary journals in the 1970s, and many others have been published since that time on JRD in Dobermans Pincers, Alaskan Malamutes, Norwegian Elkhounds, Samoyeds, Standard Poodles, and Golden Retrievers, most individual cases of JRD are treated by owners and veterinarians as isolated occurrences rather than as the manifestation of a genetic disease. The type of renal disease, also called Renal Dysplasia, from which my puppy died, is also seen in Airedale Terriers, Bedlington Terriers, Boxers, Bulldogs, Chow Chows, Great Danes, Great Pyrenees, Irish Wolfhounds, Keeshonds, King Charles Spaniels, Miniature Schnauzers, Old English Sheepdogs, Swedish Foxhounds, Shih Tzus, Lhasa Apsos, Soft Coated Wheaten Terriers, Portuguese Water Dogs, and Yorkshire Terriers. It is just recently being seen in Golden Retrievers, a breed in which it had not before been recognized. Other types of genetic renal disease are also well known in Rottweilers, Shar Peis, Miniature Poodles, Cairn Terriers, Welsh Corgis, Pekingese, Shetland Sheep Dogs, Collies, Beagles, Basenjis, Bull Terriers and Cocker Spaniels, among others.