We brought Buddy into the vet yesterday afternoon and as soon as our sweet vet walked in to the room he piddled. Took her 5 seconds to tell us he has a UTI! Yep, his urine stinks pretty bad. We’re talking, open the windows and where’s the air freshener? stink. GAG. We had chalked it up to his med’s causing the smell. Well, now it all makes sense. DAH. His little dribbles here and there and his larger pee accidents are caused by either a bladdar infection or a urinary tract infection. He doesn’t empty his bladder out as well so he’s got this cesspool going on inside of him. Our vet wanted to analyze his urine to be sure (even though we all know it’s a no brainer). Here’s where the soup ladle comes in. She tried massaging him in the office to get him to pee but no luck. So outside we went with the vet tech and a soup ladle to catch his pee. I don’t know why I find this so funny but I do. (One must find humor in every situation.) Steve helped Buddy along outside with his harness and my job was to alert the tech when Buddy squatted so he could play catcher with the ladle. “There he goes!” I shouted! And quick as lightening that tech had that ladle right under him. Best pee catcher on the league. And back inside we went with the freshly caught pee. Nice.
On to the pressure sore. It had gotten pretty nasty to where it was red from infection and now a small crater had formed. This was all caused by the under strap’s of his harness. He need’s a lot of help getting up and when he goes potty outside. Even though the straps are padded, they cut into him pretty hard. Over time, it has caused a pressure sore. We had an older version of the Ruffwear harness without the brush guard. I don’t think the brush guard attachment was out yet when we first got his harness. My advice to older Tripaw owners or if your furry friend is in a situation like ours where they need a lot of assistant is to look into purchasing this attachment if you don’t already own it. Amazon sell’s it for about $25. It will distribute the weight more evenly on their underbelly. Or maybe even look into the sling type harness that Tripaw has. Ok, so we really need to get pressure off of that sore. The new harness attachment will help but still, there needs to be as little pressure as possible on that sore. So we picked up some foam insulation tubing that goes around your pipes at Home Depot. We cut a square off and cut a hole in the center. The hole is where his sore goes and TA DA!, it takes pressure away from that sore. I’ll attach a picture at the end of this post. We are still playing around with the best placement of it and it’s not easy to put his harness on but eventually we will get it down to a science. He’s on Clavamox for the infection as well. All in all it was a pretty good vet visit with solution’s to some pretty messy problem’s.
We continue to embrace his senior citizenship. (To bad he can’t carry a card with him so we can get cheaper dog food) Here’s looking forward to better smelling pee, healing pressure sore’s and continued patience for that ACL to heal!
Cheer’s!
This is the underside of his harness with the brush guard attachment. We attached the foam and cut out a hole where his sore is.