Worried about Isabelle........

[jennapea]

Kat

Please, please keep us posted about her.
Plus she has to deal with the 2 new ones on board at the same time.

Yes, I would have thought that was the problem, other than it started a few days before they got there. I also thought the constant peeing could have been from her being in heat, but vet said no. He said about the same thing Rory did about infections, bacteria, etc. We will have her spayed 2 months after this heat and hopefully never have to deal with this again. Poor baby. :cry: I should have known when she'd squat for a minute straight, but only a little bit came out.

[Davy]

Just a general comment: My vets give out a small syringe and then you have the dog pee on a hard surface like a floor or concrete. Then it is easy to suck up a sample of the urine and it stays in the syringe due to the vacuum crated. You pop it in a bag they provide and drop it in to them. I suppose it can get contaminated but probably not by anything that affects a culture for an infection. With a female you can often sneak a soup ladle under them or a small plate or cup.

Having had to get the dreaded urine sample off a small female dog who was never going to let me stick anything under her while she went.

I found the easies way was to take a tray, cover it in cling film and then start the waiting game of when the dog wants to go.

As soon as they start put the dog on the tray, and then it’s much easier to collect.

You can get what is called a child syringe from a drugs store that can be used to suck up the urine then put the urine in an old but clean tablet bottle to take to the vets.

[Cathy T]

Poor baby! Shelby had a UTI a couple of months ago. It was hard to detect because she is a "marker". My clue was how often she ran outside like she had to go now. A couple of days on antibiotics and she was fine (of course we did the whole course of antibiotics)

[jennapea]

Well Isabelle got her third pill out of 20 today and she is doing MUCH better. She actually rang the windchimes to go outside this morning which she hasn't done in a week. AND when she was outside before she'd stop to pee every couple minutes and nothing would come out. She's not doing that as often now, so it seems it's starting to clear up. We will give the whole course of 10 days of pills, but after 3 there is already a huge improvement.
Thanks all for you caring thoughts and suggestions!!

[Nicki]

Thank goodness - that's great news.

Hugs for Isabelle - glad she's feeling better

[rory]

Phew!! what a relief! I'm sure you must feel so much better to see her feeling better! Definitely give her the FULL COURSE. No stopping short or she might get nasty resistent bacteria!

[Karlin]

Giving the full course of antibiotics is important for another reason, too -- that people often stop taking or giving pills when they think they (or whoever is taking the course) looks cured of whatever ailed them. The problem is that unless the full course is followed, there's a good chance a few bacteria will survive and produce a new strain of offspring that are increasingly more resistent to the antibiotic. These will be sneezed or coughed or in some other way, introduced back into the environment. This phenomenon makes antiobiotics increasingly less effective and some now totally useless -- and is actually a cause of a serious medical crisis for humans -- because lethal illnesses like tuberculosis and malaria which could once be cured or prevented by a simple course of tablets are now increasingly and in some cases totally resistent to any antibiotic!! icon_yikes

Whether for us, our families or our pets it is really important to complete the full course of any antibiotic to make sure others continue to gain the benefit of these drugs.

[jennapea]

I am the biggest offender of this. I NEVER finish my full course when I'm sick. I will make sure we don't forget Isabelle's though. I don't want her having to go through this again if there is anyway to avoid it. Thanks all!

[Karlin]

There now, you have a good reason to take all your pills too, Kat!!

[Linda]

Kat
I am guilty of this too, but even more so my kids.
If I am not literally standing watching them swallow the pill, they won't take it once they start feeling better.
I am going to have them read Karlin's post.
My son suffers from really bad allergies, he takes the medication for
a week once feeling better stops, and within a week he is back to square one. :cry: