Pee Problems

To most people, the word “house-trained” refers to a dog who has been trained not to urinate or defecate indoors. For my parent’s generation, this bit of training was usually accomplished by Mom, who stayed home while the rest of the family went to work or to school. As double-income families became the norm, the home-alone dog was faced with a serious problem. By the time you add a lunch hour and commute time onto an eight-hour work day, a house dog may have to “hold it” for as long as 10 hours before someone finally comes home to let her out. Her legs are probably tightly crossed for at least the last two.

Submissive urination is a vexing challenge with some puppies and young dogs. Most grow out of it eventually, but in the meantime, how can you help your pup put a cork in it? In the canine world, when one dog wants to show deference to another, more dominant dog, he may urinate as a sign of submission. The more threatened he feels, the more likely he is to urinate. This is an involuntary reaction, an instinctive behavior that all dogs are born “knowing” how and when to exhibit. In a pack of dogs, this programmed behavior is a valuable survival mechanism. Puppies are extremely vulnerable to the wrath of adult dogs in the pack, and built-in submissive responses signal normal adult dogs to automatically shut off the aggression, thus keeping puppies from being hurt.

My 2-1/2 year old spayed female Akita is showing a pattern of recurring bladder infections. An ultrasound showed scar tissue from a long-term infection before I adopted her from a rescue group. When she gets an infection, there is blood in her urine and the pH is 9.0. I understand there is a chicken and egg argument about the high pH and infections. Is there anything that will help lower the pH of her urine and make her less prone to infection, or is the high pH more likely just a result of the infection?

Incontinence in spayed females is fairly common. The problem is caused by a lack of estrogen, which, of course, was brought about by the spay surgery. Many people assume that when females are spayed, the veterinarian simply “ties the tubes,” that is, cuts and ties off the fallopian tubes so that the ovum can not travel from the ovaries, down the fallopian tubes, and become fertilized. Actually, the veterinarian removes the ovaries and usually, the uterus, too. The reason for this is that you not only want the female to become incapable of becoming pregnant, but also, you want her not to exhibit symptoms of heat.

but the presence of other dogs there