I had been on here a while ago researching so problems we were having with our pup Lucy. She basically has no bladder control and will leak out whenever she needs with no warning.
She will wake up wet if left to sleep and will start to leak if she doesn't go out soon after drinking water. She does not squat and go inside just leaks out.
She is basically house trained in the sense that she knows its wrong to go inside. She will ask to go out and do her business when number 2 is involved but when it comes to peeing she has to be brought out. we have to watch her and see if she's starting to leak and then take her out. Almost as if she doesn't feel that she has to go. She knows the potty command at this point and will squat and do her thing as soon as you ask her outside.
She has been treated for possible bladder infections a couple times with different antibiotics. We gave her time to grow out of it so to speak and there has not been much improvement.
Currently for the past 3 weeks she has been on a medication called Proin. It works for her and she stays dry pretty much all the time. She still won't ask to go outside to pee for some reason but she stays dry when inside. I really really don't like he on the medicine. She is very lethargic on it to the point that I want her to nip at us or beg for food. She did get used to the meds and perk up a little but still not acting like a normal 5 month golden should act. She has been holding her bladder longer now as in 1.5 hours instead of 20 minutes and she can hold it through the night. But still she doesn't let us know when it's time to go we just are on a habitual schedule of taking her out to pee.
The idea of the pills is supposedly to help expand her bladder and train the muscles to function properly on their own. Unfortunately it is hard to tell of they are working enough to be able to take her off of them. We have tried to move her to one pill a day per the Vets instructions and she starts to leak again at night. The vet put her back on two a day for now and we are waiting to talk to him again on Friday. The leaking when on one pill a day wasn't as bad it seemed as before she was on the pills but we were told if shes still leaking to keep her on 2 a day for now.
I don't trust the Proin and have read some not so good reviews of the stuff but most complications from it seem to be in older dogs. Still I do not want her on it any longer than she has to be.
I have read a bunch about these symptoms and not to much has been promising. I am thinking we need to take her to see a specialist but don't really know where to find one. I also really need to find an alternative treatment other than the proin. I have seen things ranging from herbal to acupuncture for dogs. Unfortunately I don't know exactly what is going on with her so i'm not sure where to turn.
She is such a sweet pup and we can tell she doesn't know what is going on when she leaks. The pills have made it manageable and at least she's not getting 5 baths a day now. We just want her to feel better and be a healthy young pup. I worry about her developing the right way and if there are going to be any problems with spaying later on. I have heard that spaying incontinence is fairly common and we didn't even get to that part yet.
If anyone has any advise or experience with these types of problems your input would be greatly appreciated. We want to follow all avenues of treatment and try to make the right decisions along the way.
I am sorry for all of your troubles with Lucy. I hope someone can help you here. I am not that person. But had to tell you the picture of Lucy is just adorable! I love all of the balls around her!
Lucy is adorable!!! My 7 year old mix is on Proin and has been for years. She would leak at night when she was sleeping. I have not seen any problems with the medication at all. She is on one pill a day, I give it to her before we go to bed at night. If it helps your pup I would trust the vet.
I am sorry though that your girl is going through this. Riley started soon after she was spayed..I guess this can happen sometimes.
Please keep us informed on how she is doing.
My BIL had a lab that started with bladder leaking soon after she was spayed. She was on some type of meds and she lived a long, healthy life. Supposedly it was hormone-caused.
Can the pills be split? Maybe 1 1/2 pills will do the trick. (just a thought)
What has the vet suggested other then the pills? Does he have any idea on what could be causing it. Maybe you can get her on a schedule of going out after she eats, drinks, during play and waking up. The schedule might help her.
Thank you for the responses. We have her scheduled for an ultra sound this Friday just to make sure all the plumbing is in place where it should be. She has been doing really well this past couple days. I know she is on the medicine but she has been holding it longer than usual and staying dryer than usual. Partly may be because she is getting bigger she is growing sooooo Fast!!!
The vet said that she may need to go through heat to get things working properly. I don't know much about a golden in heat so that should be interesting. Something to do with the hormones helping to get her right. I don't understand what were supposed to do after that with all the spaying incontinence that I have heard of it makes me nervous. I don't want to get her good and then go and mess it up again. :doh:
Hopefully we will have more of an idea what it is on Friday and can take it from there.
I don't have advice, just a story. Dakota has had an re-occuring UTI for the last couple months. Part of the reason is an inverted vulva, others part is who knows. She has been on medication on and off for he 2 months. We have done tons of samples, ultrasounds, scope, different medication. They are suggestion this will fix itself after she goes in heat. My poor dog will probably not go in heat for another 2-3 months. We are still working with the vet. She is "fine" on medication, but off goes out 20 times a day and squats about 100 times. It is heart breaking. I hate all of this. But on the medication, she lets us know she has to go, can hold it, and is happy. I hope we aren't hurting her doing this. But I am trying to do the best for her as I assume you are for your pup.
Well Lucy went in for her ultrasound today. The results were not so good not so bad. They did not find anything conclusive yet. They did see one euretor that may be close to being eptopic. The vet said that it was hard to tell but it looked close to where it should be but also close to being in the wrong place.
That was the sort of good news. Now the scary/not so good news. They noticed that her kidneys seemed abnormal. I dot know what they saw that was considered abnormal but the comment that was made was that they looked like "old dog kidneys". This is the part that scares me.
They took blood and a fresh urine sample to send to the lab. We will hear on Monday the results. The vet didn't get specific as to what they were looking for but naturally I got to google when I got home. Now I am terrified of course. The only things that I have seen regarding kidney problems are pretty grim to say the least. Juvenile renal disease (JRD) is something that is apparently semi prevalent in dogs. Not so much in goldens but not unheard of at the same time. There is no cure just treatment to make it better for the pup and the outlook is not so good. I really hope that she is not diagnosed with any form of this as most dogs with it live only about 2 years.
So we will be waiting to hear he results of the tests and making an appointment to see a specialist to have her re-examined. The vet said that we could just leave her on the proin but kind of didn't reccomend it without saying so outright. I really want her to get the best care possible and don't like her on the meds at all. After telling him that he said he doesn't like to see a 5 month old take it or have to take it her whole life. Basically the meds are the easy way out in his case but not the best choice for the dog as far as a long term solution.
So now we wait. Breaks my heart to think what could be wrong with my girl. I am going to hope for he best right now. She is such a great dog I really hope she makes it to be a happy healthy girl.
Ok we got the test results from the vet and they aren't all bad. Her levels did not alarm the vet as far as her kidney functions go so that was a big relief for now. He didn't say exactly what her creatine levels were but I will be picking up the results later on my way home from work so I will check them then.
They did find an ecol i type infection in the urine sample so we are waiting for a culture to develop to nail down what type of antibiotics to target it with.
I have an appointment with the specialist to try to better diagnose any ectopic eurators and will also ask to see if her kidneys also look abnormal to the specialist.
Lucy has been doing pretty good herself. We have moved her down to one pill in the morning and she has been doing well with it. There was only a small leak once last night while she was napping but it was nowhere near the puddle that she once would wake up in. She even has been asking to go outside on her own which is an improvement in itself. Hopefully the new vet will be able to hammer down specifically what her problems are and we can get her taken care of. Then we can get back to the important things like not pulling on the leash lol.
Sorry it's been so long since I have posted anything but I just wanted to post a quick update on Lucy.
After additional testing it turns out that Lucy is affected by Juvenile Renal Disease. This is a genetic disease that is affecting the function of both of her kidneys resulting in decreased function. Unfortunately there is no treatment to cure the problem only treatment to make the symptoms less debilitating.
A dye study was performed on our girl to determine if the peeing problems were a "plumbing" issue or if they were something else. At the time we brought her in we were actually hoping that it would turn out to be an ectopic ureter as that can be treated with surgery. Unfortunately during the test they were able to tell that her ureters were in the proper location but that her kidneys were not filtering the dye properly. This finding as well as the lab results confirm that her kidneys did not properly develop and are not going to function properly for a normal time span.
For now Lucy is fine however she is more tired than a normal pup would be. We have been able to regulate her incontinence problem with the Proin pills so she is dry most of the time. She drinks a lot of water to try to help flush the toxins out of her body and that's about it. The prognosis is not so good however. I don't know how we are going to handle it but sooner or later she will stop wanting to eat and drink and her body will start to shut down from there.
The only thing that we can do for her is try to regulate her diet the best we can to take it as easy as possible on her kidneys. We will be trying to formulate a diet that is full of good protein and low in phosphorus as the phosphorus is know to damage the kidneys and the protein breaks down into nitrogenous wastes that the kidneys need to filter out and cant. All this will do is slow the progression of the disease and make her feel better during the process.
In November when we had her tested her BUN levels and Creatinine Levels were borderline at a BUN of around 31mg/dl and a Creatinine around 1.6 mg/dl. We recently had her tested again and the Levels have almost doubled to a BUN of 57 and a Creatinine of 3.1. These represent a change from mild to moderate kidney disease. The disease can get bad when Creatinine levels reach around 5 mg/dl. Our only hope at this point is to slow the progression with diet.
After contacting the breeder it turns out that there are other sick pups from the litter as well. There was another light colored pup that also is incontinent and is showing misshaped kidneys. Also the dog that the breeder decided to keep is showing one bad kidney. My sister has another dog from the litter that has normal blood work but is drinking water excessively so we don't yet know what her status is but she is much better off than Lucy at the moment. The breeder agreed to refund the money and is just as devastated as we are. There is no test for the disease as they do not yet know the genetic markers for many diseases in dogs so there is no way she could have known.
We are devastated to say the least. Lucy is by far the cutest sweetest lil girl and so full of love it is literally amazing. We are going to do everything possible to make her comfortable and happy while she is with us as well as to make sure she is not suffering. Lucy will let us know when she is tired of fighting I'm sure, but we don't expect that that will happen soon as she is a fighter. The scary thing is that this is unfortunately a common disease in dogs and most of the time there are no symptoms until the end. So just in case you haven't given your pup some love today go do it now cause you never know.
My heart goes out to you and your little darling. I was thinking along the lines of urinary retention, which means that she isn't emptying her bladder completely and then the leaking trouble starts. After reading your posts, I'm glad you had her examined thoroughly. I did think also, that bladder spasms could be occuring and then that might cause leaking. I am wishing the best possible outcome for you all.
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