SchnauzerMax

It's sensible to stop the steroids and see what affect that has. Fingers crossed !!

You need to be able to distinguish between excessive thirst leading to excessive amounts of water being drunk which leads to not being able to "hold it all in" and incontinence - leaking irrespective of bladder fullness. Incontinence medicine usually works on females by tightening the sphincter muscles and hence stopping leaking. It doesn't work so well on males. If your old boy is drinking so much that he con't contain himself especially when he is asleep then it may be something else. The most common is probably diabetes but there are a whole bunch of other things that could cause this. Also, if he is drinking excessive amounts of water, then his blood and urine tests may come back in the normal range which actually indicates a problem.

How much water is he drinking? My standard schnauzer Luigi had very similar symptoms to your rottie 3 years ago - incontinence and 'arthritic' pain. Bloodwork and urine tests always came back normal but he was drinking lots and lots of water and wetting the bed and peeing when he walked. Propalin seemed to work for a couple of weeks and then didn't. Eventually we ended up at a specialist. It turned out to be a tumour on his adrenal gland. The only way to diagnose it was to do an ultrasound. It did not show on x-rays. What did show on x-rays was a badly inflamed bladder that the original vet thought was bladder cancer. The 'arthritic' pain was a really incredibly sore bladder due to the tumour. The solution for Luigi was surgery. He is now 15 and slowing down but still with us. I hope the vet gets to the root of problem quickly for you.