Young Poodle Returns Home Following Successful Kidney Transplant At University Of Florida

April 18, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – It’s a classic example of motherly love: With her young son’s life in danger, mom puts herself in harm’s way and donates her own kidney to ensure the youngster’s survival.

In this case, though, there’s a twist: Mom and son – Snowstar and Benji – are poodles, and the surgery happened at the University of Florida’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital.

Eleven-month-old Benji went home Wednesday night to Sebastian with his owners, Barbara and Alan Bland. Snowstar, who also belongs to the Blands, went home last week shortly after the April 10 surgery.

“Mother and son are doing fine,” said Chris Adin, an assistant professor and small animal surgeon at UF who led the four-hour procedure, in which both animals were operated on simultaneously. UF is only the second veterinary institution in the country ever to have performed such a procedure in a clinical patient.

“We are over the moon,” said Barbara Bland. “We’re just hoping we can keep this little guy for a long time instead of looking at how long he is going to be with us. We were grasping at anything. When I think of it, I want to cry.”

The Blands first became aware of Benji’s kidney problems five months ago during a routine blood test conducted by their veterinarian prior to an appointment to have Benji neutered. Benji was 6 months old at the time.

“Our veterinarian, Jeff Slade, told me, ‘I have some bad news for you. Benji’s kidneys are deformed, and he has a congenital birth defect,’” Barbara Bland said. “ I said, ‘What does that mean?’ and he said, ‘He’s a very sick puppy and he only has a couple of months to live.’”

Devastated, the Blands gave Benji a special diet that seemed to lower the levels of toxins in his body. However, in late December the levels started rising again, so the Blands searched the Internet to learn more about kidney transplantation. With Slade’s help, they located Adin and soon had an appointment.

“Meanwhile, Benji was doing great,” Barbara Bland said. “He was up to 46 pounds, and you’d never know he was sick except that he threw up every now and then.”

After examining Benji and performing various diagnostic tests, Adin told the couple they needed to seek out a donor, preferably a relative of the dog. The Blands located one of Benji’s siblings, but she also proved to have kidney disease. Then, with help from the person they bought Benji from, they tracked down the breeder who had Benji’s mother – a white standard poodle named Snowstar – and found their match.

“The breeder was very cooperative,” Barbara Bland said. “We drove up to Alabama where she lived, and we adopted Snowstar two weeks before the procedure.” While canine kidney transplants aren’t exactly new – the first was performed at the University of California-Davis in 1984 – they still are relatively uncommon and somewhat risky. Only 24, including Benji’s, have been performed in the United States, and the survival rate is about 50 percent, said Lynda Bernsteen, who heads UC-Davis’ veterinary college transplantation program.

Adin, who performed canine kidney transplants during his residency training at the UC-Davis veterinary school, said the most technically difficult part of the procedure involves surgically connecting the blood vessels from the recipient to the renal vein and artery.

“When we’re done, the recipient dog has three kidneys, his original two that are poorly functional and the new kidney,” he said.

The procedure typically costs $4,000 to $6,000, depending on the level of complications. While some might consider that a lot of money to spend on a dog, the Blands said they’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“We were prepared to pay more,” Barbara Bland said. “It’s just an unbelievable miracle that Benji is still with us, because we knew there had been no hope.”