Our beloved dog, Sheepa, has been ill. He’s been lethargic, not smiling, and most of all – he’s had urinary problems that resulted in him having to "go" every 4 hours.
He’d awake in the mornings clawing at our door to go out… and recently the poor guy hasn’t made it all night – we’d find a puddle in the kitchen sometimes and this is even when we take him out at 2:00AM and wake up at 5:30AM for another walk.
Yes, he’s kind of an old guy. We adopted him when he was 10 years old approximately because no one else wanted him because he was such a mess and so beligerent. As you can see, he’s a truly lovable dog that’s very affectionate and just needed a chance from someone to show that he could be a really good dog.
Well, he’s about 12 now and so there was a lot of drama at the vet. They did a rectal exam to check for prostate issues which was okay. Then he got checked from liver issues & diabetes and none of those came up positive after doing blood and urine labs.
This was a problem because this could still mean one of 3 things: He might have failing kidneys at worst, he could have kidney or bladder stones which would be second worse, and then he might just have a bacterial infection which we could probably knock out using antibiotics.
So finally they did a cultured bacterial lab which looked for bacterial growth in hi urine and sure enough, he had an infection: They said E. Coli and some other bacteria. (My wife couldn’t remember the other one) Nonetheless it was good news because he might be okay if we give him some meds, which we’re starting today.
This bothered me because I have no idea how he got an infection. We give him fresh canned food every day in a clean bowl, he NEVER EVER EVER gets left overs or table scraps, and he gets fresh water from a steam cleaned bowl every day. I mopped the floor with disinfectant just to make sure but I’m really angry because there’s no reason for him to have suffered from something like this. The only thing we could think of was that he ate something outside that we didn’t know about.
Need to watch him more closely…
kurtsh
Kurt's Thoughts 