urine_bed

Your Pet: Why Is There Urine Next To My Bed Allie is a five year old Labrador retriever cross and the love of Dan and Cindy's life. They are both retired so they spend almost all their time with Allie involved. She spends her nights inside the house sleeping beside her caretakers' bed and recently there has been a problem when she gets up in the morning. Over the last ten days or so, Dan has awoken to a large wet spot on the carpet next to his side of the bed where Allie sleeps. Apparently, Allie is urinating where she sleeps. When Dan has confronted Allie with this occurrence, she cowers and tries to skulk away to another room in the house. Neither Dan nor Cindy have scolded Allie for this inappropriate urination but it is obvious to them that she feels quite badly. When reading Dan's letter, it sounds to me like Allie is having trouble with urinary tract incontinence. I suspect she is quite embarrassed by this problem as one might imagine from her behavior when she realizes what she has done. I have seen this behavior first hand in the past as a result of inappropriate "bathroom" habits by my own companion and it is very sad to watch. One can (and should) only feel pity for their companion when something like this happens. Allie certainly does not want to urinate in the bedroom. To get to the root of Allie's inappropriate urination, we must determine whether or not there is a pathology associated with it. Sometimes, there can be an underlying disease process that leads to excess urination and as a result, urination in unusual locations. Often times one of the symptoms associated with some of these disease processes is increased thirst. When a dogs drinks more water, they naturally will have to urinate more frequently and produce more overall urine volume. This can happen with diabetes or other hormonally based disease processes such as Cushings disease. Kidney disease can lead to increased thirst followed by increased urination. Sometimes with bacterial urinary tract infections, dogs will urinate more frequently and sometimes drink more as well. The irritation associated with infection in the bladder will cause the increased frequency of urination. Any of these processes as well as other possibilities may be underlying Allie's inappropriate urination. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to rule in or out most of the more common disease processes that might be causing Allie's urinary tract issues. She needs a visit to her veterinarian, physical examination, and some diagnostic evaluation including a urinalysis and a blood panel. If this testing shows no abnormalities, it can be a relatively safe assumption that Allie has primary urinary incontinence. Primary urinary incontinence occurs most commonly in middle to older age female dogs. It is common for affected dogs to be relaxing or sleeping and arise to find a puddle of urine left behind. In some cases, they can be standing or moving around an leak urine. This occurs because there is decreased muscle tone to the outer urinary sphincter which then allows some amount of urine to "sneak" by. The more full or distended the bladder becomes, the more urine can leak out. This is why there can be quite a volume found say in the morning after a night of urine accumulation into the bladder. Primary urinary tract incontinence is treatable using medication that can increase tone to the weakened urinary sphincter. It is usually quite successful though it usually requires life long treatment. That said, there are cases that do resolve after treatment. For obvious reasons, it is very important to rule out any pathologic cause for Allie's abnormal urination but if it does turn out to be primary urinary tract incontinence, her prognosis is a good one.