Too little is just as bad as too much
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If your pet's urine is too little and too dark, it could be the sign of a bladder infection - or worse
Too much urine was the topic of last week’s column, but today, it’s about too little urine.
That urine overflow mentioned last week came from my elderly cat Susu, whose kidney problems are making her urinate more often than usual.
There are many causes for your pet to be urinating too much, but I’m sure about Susu’s problem because her blood test indicates that her kidneys have started to fail, a common problem with elderly animals (and humans too).
By coincidence, about the time that Susu’s urine began growing in volume, I noticed that my poodle pup Wan-Wan was urinating less frequently, and that each urination was much smaller than usual.
In addition, the urine was growing darker and darker. No longer was it a healthy yellow but much closer to a dark orange.
It’s by luck, I suppose, that Wan urinates on those flat, white nappies. Otherwise, I may not have noticed this change in colour.
Much more obvious is that Wan hasn’t been her normal bouncy self. She walks slowly, as if she’s in pain. She still greets people and other dogs happily, but her energy seems much lower than normal.
She’s eating normally, but very unusually for her, she’s refusing to eat her treats.
At the clinic, the vet finds that the dog’s temperature is normal, but a gentle squeeze of her abdomen makes her cry out in pain.
The vet tells me that the change in Wan’s urination habits and in the colour of her urine, along with the pain she feels in her abdomen all indicate that she has cystitis, a bladder infection.
The infection is caused by bacteria entering her bladder, but how they got there is a mystery. My guess is that Wan loves playing in the water when I clean the turtles.
The dirty water must have provided the source of the bacteria.
A course of antibiotics easily cures a simple bladder infection, but you and your vet do have to be careful. If the antibiotics don’t work, all those symptoms might indicate a more serious condition – bladder stones or even, as the worst case, cancer.
Wan’s been on the antibiotics for about 10 days now. The colour of her urine is starting to get lighter, but she’s still not 100 per cent. Not to worry – she still has 20 days to go.
