Dog Urinates On Bed In Sleep

[Pretty Miss Emma]

cripes PME that is some ordeal. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer as I'm sure it wasn't easy.

Yeah it was, to be honest it was all a bit crappy. But such is life and I was lucky enough to have a brilliant beautiful girl who never complained about anything and was the perfect patient through all her different treatments. I was also really lucky with all my vets as they were super supportive and always prepared to give Em every opportunity and chance. You know they say some things make you stronger - well these are the things that have done that for me!!! And they're also the things that have taught me just how exceptionally wonderful dogs are and that there really are some dogs that are just beyond super special in the world!!!

[FANG]

Do you fill his water bowl in the mornings and leave it all day, and then he only drinks it at night?

My dog has re-occurring hormonal incontinence. I find it mostly re-occurs when she has been drinking excessive amounts of water. So I tend to fill up her bowl during the day when necessary, then in the evenings after her last wee (at @7pm) I will only put a small amount in her bowl. Its usually still there when I go to bed, but gone in the morning when I fill her bowl up again. It has helped enormously with reducing any nocturnal accidents.

There was a thread in General recently about withholding water from dogs. It generated quite a robust discussion, but I personally believe that minimising water intake just before bed and during the night should not be an issue, considering they will get most of their intake during the day and should be sleeping at night.

Just like humans. ;)

Yes, I notice very little water intake has occurred during the day and it is usually in the evening that he drinks most of his water. I think what you're doing sounds very reasonable. Would you by any chance be able to provide a link to the thread about withholding water?

Then I just can't imagine it's as dilute as you think, because as I said, it's not physically possible for a dog to be polyuric without being polydipsic - they go hand in hand.

Well that would be the logical thing, which is why I am confused! His urine is not always really dilute. I have just noticed that when he's had his accidents, it rarely has any colour to it at all and it's been quite clear from his behaviour around the time of the accident that it has happened because he has needed to pass a large amount of urine. As I said in my previous post, he urinated for almost a minute and a half just six hours prior to his most recent accident.

Normal water intake for a dog is approximately 100ml per kg. That's the easy calculation. There's a bit of give and take. As it's winter less water intake would be expected, but less intake would mean that it isn't dilute (as it still is removing salts so therefore is more likely to be concentrated if they aren't drinking much). I know that Em was tricksy with her water intake she was always locked in the house with 1 water bowl when we did a water test as she would drink from every pot plant, bucket, puddle she could find!!!!

There is definitely no other possible water source in the house. I know this, because my cats are obsessed with water and will take any opportunity they can to drink from a source that is not their own, even if it's dirty dishes left to soak in the sink! I am 99% sure the only other outdoor source would be the birdbath, but as I said before, it was definitely empty when I started monitoring his water intake. I just checked the weather for last week and it rained 4.0mm on Tuesday and 2.8mm on Wednesday and has been raining every day since then, so I guess that explains why he drank almost 1.5 litres in the first 24 hours and then only about a litre a day since then. I will try emptying it again when it stops raining and see what happens.

Em seemed to have slight incontinence (presented as periodic incontinence maybe a couple of times a month when I first got her as a 9yo) so we put her on Stilboestrol. That worked brilliantly for about 12-18 months. She was always a big drinker, got her bloods done early when she first came to live with me - no problems at all, perfect!!!! The Stilboestrol stopped working (apparently this is not uncommon), so we changed her on to Propalin. Again worked really well, then I started seeing a few accidents again. Did urine and bloods early 2010, came back with nothing. Started looking into testing for Cushing's as that testing was more complex and also discussed testing for diabetes insipidus. Did a water test for her (she drank 2.3L as a 17kg dog = 500ml too much). So then did urine again in April 2010 (after her incontinence was getting worse) not long after the water. Came back with really high sugar in her blood. Immediately did a spot BGL and it was high, within a week she was on twice daily insulin. Apparently in dogs diabetes can often show up in this way - out of the blue, not many symptoms leading up to it and not necessarily showing up clearly in early tests. Anyway she did really well until the October, then went completely blind within 2 weeks from diabetes induced cataracts. We had surgery to remove them. Lots of complications followed. She also had a bug in her lungs and developed pneumonia in April this year (diabetics are exceptionally susceptible to infections). This then caused her to become hyperglycaemic and we spent 3 months trying to battle getting her BGL back to what it should be. Then 12 July she was not good, thought it was due to incorrect insulin dose, was actually kidney failure and she was PTS that day (her kidneys were totally shot and there was no course of treatment that would have ensured her any quality of life). She'd had bloods done maybe a month earlier and everything was great, then everything fell apart.

So a huge trail of issues, and I was doing blood tests every 6 months on her and very regular urine testing. Sometimes things just come up suddenly and you just do what you can.

In all honesty through all of this it also came down to me trusting my gut. There were times when I kept up with following up little hints that something wasn't right and I do have a very supportive vet who would always recommend appropriate testing and do whatever testing I asked for - it served us well in her treatment and diagnosis. But the 2 biggies - diabetes and kidney failure - took all of us by suprise because she wasn't presenting as having typical symptoms of those until the day of diagnosis.

Thank you for sharing. I am sorry for your loss... it sounds like a very painful experience for the both of you.

I spoke with the vet yesterday and he agreed that full blood work and urine analysis would be a good idea, so it was sent off this afternoon. I will post again when I have the results.

[SchnauzerMax]

Fang,

I had similar symptoms with my old boy Luigi. He was 12 when he first started drinking heaps of water and having accidents overnight, gradually getting worse.

Multiple blood and urine tests all came back normal. The vet thought is was diabetes but it wasn't. He then thought it was bladder cancer. But it wasn't. We tried propalin (sp) and it seemed to work and then it didn't. We finally ended up at a Vet Specialist.

It turned out that Luigi had a tumour on the adrenal gland (his left adrenal was 4 times larger than his right one).

This was diagnosed by ultrasound because none of his blood or urine samples were ever abnormal. The worst that they were was a little bit on the dilute side of normal.

The water drinking compensated for the effect of the tumour but made him pee more which led to accidents when he was asleep.

The tumour produced adrenaline in spikes so the levels were never constantly elevated and as a result his drinking was not constant.

The specialist commented that a lot of animals that have this sort of tumour eventually die of stroke - the sudden rise in adrenaline causes the blood pressure to spike.

It was a major operation to remove the tumour but Luigi had a good life until he was almost 16 when old age caught up with him.

[FANG]

Fang,

I had similar symptoms with my old boy Luigi. He was 12 when he first started drinking heaps of water and having accidents overnight, gradually getting worse.

Multiple blood and urine tests all came back normal. The vet thought is was diabetes but it wasn't. He then thought it was bladder cancer. But it wasn't. We tried propalin (sp) and it seemed to work and then it didn't. We finally ended up at a Vet Specialist.

It turned out that Luigi had a tumour on the adrenal gland (his left adrenal was 4 times larger than his right one).

This was diagnosed by ultrasound because none of his blood or urine samples were ever abnormal. The worst that they were was a little bit on the dilute side of normal.

The water drinking compensated for the effect of the tumour but made him pee more which led to accidents when he was asleep.

The tumour produced adrenaline in spikes so the levels were never constantly elevated and as a result his drinking was not constant.

The specialist commented that a lot of animals that have this sort of tumour eventually die of stroke - the sudden rise in adrenaline causes the blood pressure to spike.

It was a major operation to remove the tumour but Luigi had a good life until he was almost 16 when old age caught up with him.

Wow, thanks for telling me this!

I just spoke with the vet and there were some abnormalities in the blood and urine:

Liver function is 350, whereas normal is 10-120. Apparently it is mainly a concern if it goes above 400, but it's still outside the normal range.

White blood cells are 370 and normal is 0-20. Red blood cells are 90 and normal is 0.

The urine culture had bacterial growth, so he has a UTI.

He is going on antibiotics for a couple of weeks and then the tests are to be repeated again in a month... hopefully the liver function will be back to normal then. I will let you know how it all goes.

[SchnauzerMax]

Fingers crossed for the antibiotics.

[A-B-C]

Cripes Fang. The good thing is that you now have some answers at least. Good luck with the anti's and future tests!!

[Pretty Miss Emma]

So glad you followed through with testing and now have some answers.

Fingers and paws are crossed in this house for you that the antibiotics do the trick and it's all been the UTI.

Keep us updated with how it is all going.

Good luck!!!

[FANG]

Okay so antibiotics got him totally back to normal... We haven't had any more accidents and he lasts the night. I recently had him in to redo his blood & urine tests, and they came back normal, so the weird liver function value was nothing to worry about. Yay!

[Pretty Miss Emma]

Yay!!!!

[persephone]

Good news

[SchnauzerMax]