Puppy bladder problems!

Westport_belle

Hi,

Hoping somebody has some words of advice for me....

I recently had my 6 month old dog spayed. Before the spaying, she was almost toilet trained and had pretty good control over herself (apart from the odd excitement wee where she shouldn't).

After the spaying, we noticed that she was peeing more or less everywhere....not on purpose, it just seemed that the urge was sneaking up on her and she couldn't control herself.

I've looked at various threads online and have found other people have noticed similar things happening after spaying, though many vets say there's no connection.

The vet removed her stitches yesterday morning and I spoke to him about this problem. He's very experienced, performs loads of these operations and said the spaying shouldn't affect her bladder control.

His best guess was that maybe she picked up a urinary tract infection and suggested we treat her for this. Apparently it takes several days to diagnose a UTI, so he went ahead and gave her an anti inflammatory injection and sent me home with some anti biotiocs in the hope that this sorts things out.

There hasn't been any improvement so far, I would have thought that if it was a UTI, anti biotiocs would start to have an effect pretty much straight away. I have my doubts about her having a UTI anyway because she's not in the least bit off form.

I'm really hoping that somebody else has had a similar experience and would have some other ideas about what's going on.....

In the meantime, will continue to clean up the accidents and not be cross with the poor dog!

DBB

It'll take 2-3 days for most antibiotics to kick in.
Do not be fooled by a dog being on good form meaning that there's nothing lurking in the background. I send a lot of people to vets every year with their dogs for suspected UTI, most owners tell me there's nothing wrong with their dog, she/he's in great form. And most of the time, it turns out there is something wrong. Dogs are brilliant at masking illness and are stoical about discomfort and pain. Well, most of them are
I'm pretty sure that UTIs are not unheard-of after spaying operations.
I'm not sure of there's a correlation between spaying and suddenly losing housetraining, but there is certainly a correlation between pain/discomfort and loss of training! It is possible that she started to pee more simply due to feeling a bit crap after being spayed. This can be reinforced by owner reaction, so if she gets lots of sympathy for uncharacteristic peeing, it's possible she could start to do it to achieve the reinforcement.
I'd suggest going back to basics with her, if you used a crate to house-train her, use it again for a while, bearing in mind that she will need plenty of opportunities to get outside. If you didn't use a crate, then get her out at least twice as often as you do now, and bring some delicious treats with you so you can reward her once she's done.
Good luck!