The dog musing/vent thread

You guys are right, I just have such bad anxiety that rejection (even for stupid things like this) is really hard for me. I feel a bit silly asking I guess. But it's something I really want to do, so I'm going to try!

DJetzel, holy awesomeness! That's such an awesome turn of events for you. What an awesome instructor you have

How about paying on a weekly basis? I've had students who do that. So instead of swinging the full amount up front, they just pay a little bit every week. You can ask about that too maybe.

I think Abrams has Greater Swiss Mountain Dog in his bloodline.

Because how else does a 10 month old dog STILL not have freaking bladder control outside of his crate?!?! So. Frustrating. I should not still have to let him out to pee every 40 minutes without risk of him exploding on the floor. I've never had this problem with past dogs. Sadie was 100% housebroken by 4-5 months and Chloe was able to he left loose unsupervised without any problems for hours on end by 9 months. Why does he act like he has no bladder control when he can hold it without fail in his crate?

Edit: Rant aside....There wouldn't be an underlying health issue causing this, right? He's clinically healthy and I would feel silly doing diagnostics on this young of a dog. He doesn't have a UTI, some I'm assuming it is purely a developmental thing? I have noticed improvement as he matures (he doesn't pee EVERY time he's going outside now, and he can typically hold it for over an hour now before I have to worry about him leaking), so I'm assuming it will just continue to take time....but dang. There is a reason I don't have a Swissy!

Apparently, Roxie's days of laying in the sun indoors are going to end when we move. My mom wants her to be a basement-only dog. I thought it was bad enough that I was going to have to make her a kennel underneath the stairs for when I'm at work. (The mudroom at the new house isn't kosher for Roxie to stay in, like my current one is)

Nope.

She can't be upstairs. Period. Sure, sure, they're building a family room and my bedroom in the basement so it won't just be concrete and boxes, but still. I just don't like excluding my dog from being with the rest of my family... At all. It's not fair for a dog who's whole existence revolves around being with people.

Plus it's just stupid to make a dog live in a cold, dark basement. I would much rather transition her to being an outside dog rather than a basement dog. If I can't persuade my mom on this, I actually just might have a set up for her outside for nice weather. It's not like we aren't outside all the time anyways. Obviously she'd still sleep with me, but at least then she has more freedom and my sisters would probably be more interested in spending time with her, as I doubt they would if she's locked in the basement.

It just sucks to think that this dog would have to be separate from the family. And she's a party animal. We're always having parties for my sisters' school/traveling teams and Roxie LOVES that. Huge crowds are her calling. She's soooo calm and content when there's a ton of people over. Even more so than when it's just us.

Sorry for the long rant. It just makes me very unhappy to exclude Roxie from what she's used to having. And really, how is it gonna be with her? She'll probably freak out if she's not allowed to follow me everywhere. And I don't wanna stay in the basement all the time. I like the sun, too.

How do you know that he doesn't have a UTI? :-/

And this is why I spend a lot of time in the "attic" that is my rooms. My dogs aren't banned from the main floor, but they're only down there a few hours a day when the cats are put up. And this is one reason I REALLY need out of here. I'd rathers spend time with my dogs than with my family any day, so if they don't want the dogs downstairs, I'm not down there either.

You might want to work him up for an ectopic ureter.

I've checked. I would say at least every other month since he's been having what I deem problems. No issues. I will probably check again...but I doubt I'll find something.

What would the procedure for this be?

I just...don't understand. He's gotten better. In the mornings and after he's crated he isn't as urgent to get outside and there isn't a pee trail any longer. When I let him out to pee on his chain and he has to wait a moment, there is actually a realistic amount of pause I can work with to get him out the door without peeing. But he acts as if he can't physically "hold" a full bladder, and I have to let him out every 40-60 minutes or he starts to pester me to be let out, and when he goes it is a lot of urine. And heaven forbid he actually have to wait in the process to go outside. I've purposefully not taken him out when he asks at times to see how lo g he can go, and when we start pushing 90-120 minutes he'll have an accident. (He'll stand by the door and "leak" like he does when he leaves a urine trail, only it is all in one spot because he's standing and not walking. He knows he is urinating because his body language turns into "oh, crap," as verbally scolding a dog that is peeing on my floor is pretty much reflex. He's able to stop urinating long enough to get outside to finish the job OR, alternatively, if I throw him in his crate to stop me from killing him if he does this within what is normally an acceptable time frame from his last potty break, he has ZERO leakage in his crate and I'm able to clean up the mess and then let him outside like normal and we don't have a problem.

It's just extremely frustrating. It isn't happening every day now, thank God, but still frequently enough for it to be annoying. I'd say once a week or so I'm having to clean up pee, more if our routine is thrown out of whack like it was last night.

I've dealt with incontinence before, and this doesn't have the same feel, IMO. He's not "leaking" urine constantly, or doing it without realizing what is going on. It is more like he just doesn't understand how to *not* urinate when he has a full bladder and isn't confined to a crate. If that makes sense. He's like a toddler that knows she's supposed to go in the toilet, but when she has to go she has to GO and in the process of going to the toilet has a small accident in her pullups. Not the main event, but enough to ruin her underwear and possibly pants if she weren't wearing pullups.

I think I would start with getting an abdominal ultrasound. They can diagnose EUs with ultrasound though I think a cystoscopy is just about the best way to do it, but an ultrasound could also reveal if anything else is going on that might not require the scope to see. Auggie didn't need to be put under for his ultrasound, but they obviously do need to be put under for the scope. I usually try to go for minimally invasive first and then go ahead if I need to do more. If the ultrasound doesn't reveal anything, then you could move forward and scope.

OTOH if money is an object, it might be better to skip the expense of the ultrasound and just go straight to the scope. They should find just about everything with the scope and sometimes they can even do treatment while they're in there...




My vet just called to remind me of everybody's appointments tomorrow. P and Auggie have chiropractor appointments. Pepper is down for an annual.
They called Pepper a boy.
It always worries me when they can't just get minor details right. Pepper is an INTACT FEMALE. No. When they first started doing online vet records, I logged in and discovered they had Auggie's birthday wrong, which whatever, that's not a big deal - but they had him down as an intact mixed breed. And then found baby Payton was down as a neutered lab. What. WHAT. What?? So now I wonder if they have Pepper down as a boy. PEPPER IS NOT A BOY.
sigh.

No shame. That stuff bothers me to end talk about unprofessional and disorganized.
When I took Merlin to a vet (not his) to get neutered, they called him Marlin and had "australian cattle dog" written (this was after his pre-opt appointment, paperwork etc.. on his OFFICIAL intake form)...and I swear, I claimed some emergency and I walked out. Next thing you know I would've gone to pick him up and they would've given me back a cat named Marlin.

Went back to his regular vet and paid a hell of a lot more for a neuter but they knew his frikin name.

Get yo **** together vets.

at Frag's first vet visit they stepped out and said "Fag?"

/facepalm

Of course I ended up hating that vet.

I can't wait until I end up with a koolie or a pyrshep or something of that sort.

'So you have a collie and a great pyrenees?'

One of our techs is notorious for mixing up the gender of the patients. It drives me BONKERS. If I do screw up, I always make sure to apologize as soon as I realize the mistake. Mistakes happen, we see a lot of patients every day, but ya, I think that effort to reduce those mistakes is a good indication of whether that vet is worthy of clients though.

Diabetes insipidus? What's his specific gravity been on his u/a?

1.036 was his last SG that I recorded. I think it's always been around 1.030 (upper 1.020s, mid 1.030s). pH of 7, everything normal on dipstick. Under the scope, NSF.

I'm going to bring in a sample tomorrow and do a spot check/SG.

Yah, with major things like that, I'd be weary.

For the longest time, my vet had Renegade's file under Rogue's name. So the only off thing was birthday and colour. We didn't notice until I brought Ren and Rascal in one day, and they kept confusing them.

I wasn't really mad about that. I had brought Ren and Rogue in together when I got them, and it was quite possibly my own fault. They had all the medical information correct just... wrong colour.

We laughed when we discovered it

I'm super guilty of screwing up genders. I mean, I always look at what the gender is supposed to be, and then sometimes my brain just decides to purge that info 5 seconds later, and I end up using the wrong pronoun. Oddly enough, despite the fact that the majority of my pets have been female, I always default to referring to animals as males.

But that's just a me problem, we totally have the correct gender entered lol. What irks me is when people have their pet spayed/neutered somewhere else, and we never get the memo on that. So then I think I'm seeing an intact female and ask when her last heat cycle was, and get "oh she's spayed." Derp.

My first vet though Auggie's name was "Huggy."
...


I just looked up Georgie's records, and they have her down as an altered mixed breed. Pepper isn't on my account (she's still on her co-owners) so I can't look to see any of her info. She's probably down as an altered male mixed breed...

I wanted to take her to my new vet, but the co-owner wanted her seen by the holistic DVM, and the boys needed a chiro visit anyway. Plus I want her to listen to Auggie's heart murmur and see what her evaluation is. The old vet (the office the holistic DVM does her appointments out of) told me it was a 3, maybe 4. My new vet had to listen really hard and said "I'd say a 1, I can hear something but it's REALLY hard to hear." That's a big discrepancy... so Auggie's breeder suggested having the holistic vet listen and see where her evaluation lies before I decide to do anything as far as his teeth cleaning goes. I was all ready to do it, and the holistic vet told me she thought my thinking was sound when I told her I was going to do it now before he actually needs it since he's still young and the risk is lower now. But then I started panicking about putting him under because of his heart murmur. I had a dream about Happy (who had a heart murmur) earlier this month. So now I'm scared about Auggie. Even though I know it's irrational.
So away we go back to this vet's office. At least my old vet isn't the one actually seeing her.

Fable keeps on putting stuff in the litter box. First she put a piece of paper there and this morning I caught her dropping my sock in. Weirdo.

My vet did have Summer down as weighing 0.0 lbs for a while. My apartment pitched a hissy fit and would not accept her even though she was OBVIOUSLY BELOW THEIR 25 LB WEIGHT LIMIT!