Update on Whiskey

As I had said in a quick update on Whiskey at the end of the day on our last post, she has a bladder infection and bladder stones.  She had bladder stones once before when she was about 5 years old and she had surgery to remove them.  It would be nice to go that route again because then we know they would be gone, but because of her age it worries us.

The vet wants us to work on the bladder infection with antibiotics and then to switch her diet over to a special food that is made specially to dissolve bladder stones.  This is a bit of a double edged sword though as our two options are surgery or diet.  I already mentioned the issue of the surgery and the complications with the anesthesia in older dogs, but the food that she wants to give Whiskey is quite high in salt which could cause issues with high blood pressure in her and to top that off she has a small heart murmur, so we will have to keep a close eye on her.

There are two kinds of bladder stones, one is struvite crystals which build upon each other to create the stone and the other kind is more typical in older dogs and is call calcium oxalate which is the core of the stone and then the struvite crystals build on that.  The diet that we are putting Whiskey on will only dissolve the struvite crystals, but not the calcium oxalate.  So the diet will hopefully made the stones smaller and in about 4 or 5 weeks we have to take her back and have another x-ray taken to see if any progress has been made.  There is no way to know which kind it is until they start to dissolve and it they completely dissolve then they were the struvite kind, if they only get to a certain point and no small then they are obviously the calcium oxalate kind and then there is no other choice except surgery by the look of things.

We had a bad night that first night (Tuesday night), I gave Whiskey the antibiotic and a few hours later she kept whining and wouldn't settle down, and she kept wanting to go outside.  This went on all night until the antibiotic started to wear off around 6am.  Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night and neither did Whiskey, poor thing!  I called the vet that morning and asked if there was another antibiotic she could have and they said this is what she needed.  They suggested that I stop by and pick up another pill that I would give to her about a half hour before her antibiotic.  This pill will put a coating on her stomach to hopefully help her accepted it better, as well as some probiotic that I am to sprinkle on her food once a day.

Whiskey seems to be doing better with this now and I got a can of the new food which I am slowing introducing to her so that won't upset her system either.  Everything seems to be working OK now, although she got us up twice last night to go out and do her thing.  Much better than having an accident.

Kevin has headed up to Ottawa tonight and staying overnight at his parents and then early in the morning he will pick up our son, Alex and take him back to school for his last year.  He is really looking forward to getting back to Plattsburg and to university.  Alex said that only thing he will miss is not being able to play baseball this year, but he is hoping to play more tennis and maybe even some golf.  He has a hard year ahead with lots of math courses. but is pretty confident he can do this.