Two nights ago, I went to bed about an hour before Marlin, and Coulee decided to keep Marlin's spot warm until he arrived. When he came up, he booted her off the bed but discovered a wet spot where she had been laying. A big wet spot. So big, it went through the blankets and sheets and into the mattress.
A few weeks ago we had been finding pee - at work and at home - but it took us a while to figure out that it was Coulee who was doing it. At work, she is in a room with Lacey, Vito and Pixel and as Coulee has NEVER peed inside we couldn't believe it was her. Same thing with at home. Then it happened when Lacey was crated at home but Coulee was loose. We tried to convince ourselves that the pee was there before Lacey went into the crate and we just didn't notice (and some how didn't step in it getting her into the crate). But finally, we put the pieces all together and realized that Coulee was the common thread in all of them.
Why did it take us so long to figure it out? Because we just couldn't believe it. Coulee would be horrified to pee in the house. She was almost instantly house trained as a puppy - she learned so fast. We thought we were brilliant... until it took us a year to fully house train Lacey. Obviously we weren't the brilliant ones. ;)
Anyway, we took her to the vet and we found that she had an infection that could be causing the peeing. Turns out, the peeing caused the infection so while we cleared up the infection, we didn't stop the peeing. And again, there was evidence that we ignored. On the day of our follow-up appointment for the infection, there was a big wet spot on the floor at work that we managed to convince ourselves was spilled water.
But we couldn't ignore the giant wet spot in the bed. Although trust me, we tried. "Was she licking? Maybe it is just saliva..." Yeah. Saliva that leaks all the way through to the mattress. We are seriously dense. I'm surprised we didn't consider if it was me who wet the bed!
So it turns out she has Hormone Incontinence which is pretty common in older large breed females who have been spayed. She'll need to be on medication from now on and now we just need to figure out which one we want to go with. We'll be researching things this weekend but if anyone has any advice please let me know. While I trust my vet, I'm trying to make an informed decision. I'm not really a holistic kind of person, but at the same time I hate the idea of being on constant medications so I want to make sure the medication I pick is the best one for her.
Coulee isn't letting it get her spirits down. She has been having too much fun with her chicken to care. Which, by the way, is a great dog park toy - impossible to lose and flys great in the wind.
3 comments:
I had a mother and daughter pair who both were incontinent at about age 10. My vet put them on phenylpropanolamine (what a word!), and although I read some horror stories about it, neither of my dogs had any problem and it worked perfectly. They were both on it until their deaths at 13 and 14 years.
Actually, I did have a problem because we spend 6 months a year in Mexico where it is unavailable but we drive to Mexico and sucessfully brought it with us--no one ever checked!
Look into unsweeted organic soy milk. About 1.8-1/4 cup per day may cure her incontinence. Natural hormone therapy via soy. You can look up more info on it online. It worked with my dog and my friend's.
Diggy - The articles I've read said that the potential benefits in canines is largely extrapolated from the impact in humans. So it hasn't been studied much, and the limited studies that have been done are contradictory to each other. It sounds like there also might be a risk to the thyroid with "too much soy" (but they don't say what too much is). It would make me nervous giving her a supplement that hasn't been studied very much as the long term effects aren't known.
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