For the past couple of days, Ayla has been having accidents in the house again. We’re pretty certain she’s in heat so we figure it might have something to do with that…or perhaps we’re less intelligent than we thought and she’s actually not in heat but has a UTI or something. Since this is more or less our first dog, we are feeling rather stupid about a lot of things and unfortunately books and the internet only help us so much right now. We’ve looked several times for symptoms of being in heat but didn’t get too far aside from vulvular swelling and traces of blood. Nothing about behavior or anything like that. We also looked up UTI symptoms last night and got a few more details but not that particularly sound like her other than having accidents in the house. Oh and I guess that there are traces of blood in her urine but that could be because she’s in heat anyway so that doesn’t help us much.
We posted a message to Newf-L last night and got a lot of mixed responses. Some people said it was almost definitely a UTI and we needed to take her in immediately to be treated and several others said that when their girl is in heat, she pees all over the place.
So we decided we’d better be safe than sorry so we’ll take her in to the vet and see what she has to say about the situation. We need to bring in a urine sample which we thought might be a bit of a mission but it turned out to be quite easy. Yesterday when I was researching UTI’s, I came across someone who said they used a ladle to collect the sample. Since Ayla is always a bit suspicious of us when we approach her while peeing and she squats very low to the ground, I decided this would probably be our best bet versus trying to stick a bowl or something under her while she’s going. I still thought it might be a little bit difficult and a distraction that would stop her concentration but I was actually able to get the sample with no trouble at all. Surprise, surprise.
So we’re off with our sample and puppy to the vet to see what the verdict is.
