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crystals in urine

twinkiex3

Member
i decided to run a general wellness profile on my dog's urine and blood last week...while i was gone on a trip this past weekend, my vet called my mother and told her that my dog has crystals in his urine, but the vet told her that she's not worried about it but will look into it more.

twinkie's a 5 year old, neutered, and he's eating a combination of fromm chicken and eagle pack lamb and rice.

his urination has been pretty normal - no asking to go out all the time, blood, etc...

should i be worried about this? i'm going to talk to my vet tommorrow when i go to work, but i was just wondering everyone's input.

when i took him to collect his blood and urine, i do know he hadn't drinken any water all day because he was nervous about staying at the vet's (cause i had him there all day since i work there) and his urine seemed pretty concentrated (note again that he hadn't drinken ANY water all day)

i'm freaking out just a little about this, like i usually do when i think there's something wrong with twinkie...
 
I would repeat the test when he's at home drinking water as he normally would. You can catch the urine in a soup ladle; just wait until his stream starts, then catch a bit. I put the urine in a clean, air dried baby food jar and take it immediately to the vet. Arrange the test ahead of time, so the urine doesn't sit around aging (that could form crystals). Also, find out what kind of crystals and is his urine too acid or too alkaline.

The risk with crystals is serious. He could be forming bladder stones. Some types can be dissolved with a special diet, and other types need surgical removal. He will probably need to be on a special diet either way, unless he has a urinary tract infection (this alone can cause crystals). Find out as much as you can, and do what the vet suggests. If the diet change is something you don't like, you can always discuss it further when he is out of danger.
 
i don't know if i could set up the test ahead of time because we send out our urine samples to idexx to do our urinalysis...although we might be able to run an in house UA my vets at work tell me that those are usually not as good...

i don't know what to do, i'm a little worried :(
 
I would talk to the vet, as you were already planning.

For starters just find out if his urine was acid or alkaline, and what type of crystals they found. Do they suspect any bladder stones could have formed. Also, did he have any bacteria in his urine. Luckily he isn't straining to urinate, and your vet isn't overly worried. Your vet will tell you everything when you talk.

I hope I didn't scare you. I have a cavalier who had crystals and urinary tract infections, but we figured it all out and she's fine now.
 
it's ok, it's just that i scare very easily and become very obsessive when it come to my little boy :(

he doesn't really run into very many health problems either...and this was the first time i'd ever run a profile on his urine, i became so much more educated when i started working at the vet hospital...

thanks for your input though
 
update

took in another sample of twinkie's pee today to my vet. ran an in house UA (did the urine strip and looked at a slide under the microscope) my vet told me that everything looks beautiful (pH is great, it was 7-7.5) and that the crystals probably just formed because we had to ship the sample to Idexx and it was sitting in a box for about a day.

:rolleyes:
 
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