Yes kidney failure in dogs can be painful for the dog going through the kidney failure.
Dying of kidney failure for a dog is usually a painful and slow process and some dogs may live for a month and some dogs may live longer.
The dog when it has kidney failure goes through a painful experience because toxic substances build up and symptoms of excess thirst, nausea, pain, weakness, appetite loss, intestinal bleeding and even seizures develop.
When a dog has kidney failure some dogs with kidney failure may live only 1 year to 2 years after diagnoses and some dogs may live as long as 4 years with the kidney failure.
However some dogs may die within a month or even sooner depending on how badly the kidneys have failed.
If a dog gets on dog dialysis they may live another 5 to 10 years but there's no guarantee.
The average cost of dialysis treatments for dogs is around $3,500.00 to $4,000.00 for the first 2 to 3 dialysis treatments for the dog.
Then after the first 2 to 3 dialysis treatments for the dog the dialysis costs per treatment usually goes down to as low as $600.00 to $700.00 per treatment.
If your dog is really old and may be dying of old age soon anyway then I would say that it's not worth the cost of dialysis treatments.
If your dog is pretty young as in 8 years old or less depending on the lifespan of the dog then it may be worth the cost if you can afford it.
Dialysis treatments are very expensive for both dogs and humans but for a human I would say it's always worth the cost of dialysis treatment for the human.
But for a dog it may or may not be worth the cost.
If you have pet health insurance and the dog got the kidney disease or kidney failure after you've had the pet health insurance for a few years then the pet health insurance may pay for the dialysis treatments but you still may need to pay out of pocket for the dialysis treatments first and then be reimbursed.
For most people paying for dog dialysis treatments is out of budget or reach with their income.