Incontinence

Lucy, our ever-ebullient Weimaraner, has been sick lately. Actually, she’s had quite a bout of allergies since Thanksgiving. So much so that her normally pale skin, which peeks out around her belly and eyes, has been almost bright pink since Christmas.

The poor dog has been on near-constant medication – mostly Benadryl and a few other prescription antihistamines – for the better part of 3 months and she still seems off. Puffy, watery eyes; runny nose; itchy paws. The dog is walking ad for some kind of new-fangled medical marvel, now in over-the-counter pill form.

So Monday on our day off for the MLK holiday we took Lucy back to the vet and he was actually happy. Happy because we’ve got a purebred dog who’s just past 6 years old and this is the first time he would be prescribing cortisone (prednisone, actually) to help her fight off the infection in her back paws and hopefully jumpstart her body into producing normal levels of cortisone herself to combat all those nasty, hard-to-shake allergic reactions.

But too much cortisone can make the body (yours, mine, a dog’s) dehydrated because of excessive urination. Your other hormones might also potentially be thrown out of whack and you’ll be worse off. So we were told to watch her water intake and to back off the cortisone if she was peeing too much.

Well last night in the middle of Grey’s Anatomy we (and Lucy) found out it was time to lower her dose. Apropos of nothing Lucy jumped off the bed – not an uncommon occurrence once the lights are off and the TV is on; she likes to patrol the hallway – because she had lost control of her bladder.

Yes, I’ve just bored you with 5 paragraphs of mostly meaningless scientific exposition to let you know that our 80-pound grey dog wet the bed last night.

Poor thing looked so ashamed and upset about it too. For my part, I just thought it was a cold spot next to the nuclear spot she always leaves behind after laying on our bed.

I was wrong. It was the surprise piss from a supine canine.

Clean up, new sheets and some reassurances and everything was good as new.

We’re cutting her dose in half, per the vet, and hoping no more incontinence occurs.

Funny enough, our cat Desmond is diabetic and is given insulin twice daily which, if you know diabetics, makes him inclined to “going” quite often. He once peed for 20 seconds continuously. This is a 17-pound cat, mind you, so that’s quite the feat.

In any event, Incontinence. Stay out of it’s stream path and have a great weekend.

2 thoughts on “Incontinence

Leave a Reply