Curious about your thoughts on this xray - Page 2

Do you know your BUN level ?

What's BUN? (lol...no I dont O.o)

Forgive me if I ask some dopey questions...dog ownership is a generally new thing to me O.o

~Cate

BUN is a test Vets can do similiar to a CBC, that tell you what deficiencies your animal has internally or nutritionally.

oooh - I havent done that...Guess I should though O.o

::streaks off to find the phone number::

~Cate

BUN measures the amount of nitrogen in the blood, an indicator of how well the kidneys are functioning. It's important to know if your dog is on a high protein diet, which will put added stress on the kidneys.

Sunsilver protein is NOT the cause of Kidney stress or damage in a healthy dog. That's a myth. Actually you should cut back proteins ONLY if the BUN is 70-75 or higher. See this is what pisses me off ... whoever started this rumor and others is full of it, and obviously NOT for the life of the animal. Think about it ... when a dog is starving do you see it in the tomato, wheat, pea, cabbage, carrot or chicken isle ?

Ceph, although I'm not accustomed to seeing a hip xray on a dog this young and considering some of the growth plates obviously still need to close, I think  you could safely assume he has normal hips for his breed and age. I don't know anything at all about PH other than they base their opinion on the degree of laxity of the hip joint. I'll assume those readings are also considered normal for breed and age.  Was your dog xrayed using a wedge? A+ on the quality and positioning of the x-ray.

A young dog would not routinely need a BUN, most vets use that particular test  as Sunsilver has stated  - to determine how well the kidneys are functioning. Too much protein in the diet will certainly cause a slight elevation in the results, but I'm not sure what that has to do with your dog's hips or anything else regarding a healthy 6 month old large breed dog. I'd save my money if I were you.

BUN is in our pre operative blood screening for young dogs.  Also includes, CREAT, ALT, ALKP, GLU, TP.  Plus a urine specific gravity and a PCV.  (PCV is only part of the CBC, it's the packed cell volume)

And I think too, that for a puppy, these look pretty good so far.

Whatever happened to the days when vets didn't require pre-op blood testing for young healthy animals? I wish I were convinced it's not overkill.