My dog had bladder stone surgery. Is his urine flow thinning again?

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Charlie. It is necessary to continue monitoring him to prevent the stones from recurring. He should have a urinalysis every 3-6 months to look for crystals in his urine, signs of a urinary tract infection and to monitor the pH of his urine. I recommend that the dog fasts for 12 hours before the urine sample is collected. I also routinely take x-rays to look for bladder stones every 6-12 months. He should eat the prescription diet exclusively. I hope this information helps!

Poor Charlie. Well his incision looks great. If he is eating food then that is a good sign. Drinking water is sometimes not adequate during the time of recovery from a surgery of this magnitude. Try adding water to his food or giving him canned food to increase his water intake. I wouldn't be too concerned just yet and give him another day or two of observation and recovery time. If you notice any foul smells, discharge, severe swelling or undoing of the sutures, then its best to have him seen by your vet. However, I would expect him to pick up his water intake and activity level in the next few days, as long as there are no complications from the surgery. You can also check his rectal temperature daily (normal is 100-102.5 degrees F) to make sure there are no signs of infection. I wish your fur baby Charlie well in his recovery.

I personally don't like to question or contradict another vet's treatment, especially since I can't see Einstein in person, but I would be concerned that there is another cause to his trouble going pee. It can happen that bladder stones are missed in surgery, or new ones can form, and I would be concerned that this could be causing his problems with urinating. I would recommend getting a second opinion from another vet as soon as possible.

Hi and thanks for posting! It can take anywhere from 10-14 days or sometimes a little longer before the bladder can heal after surgery and regain normal stream of urine. It is not uncommon for there to be a shorter urine stream or for patients that have had bladder surgery to urinate more frequently than usual. This should subside in about 1-2 weeks.

I would recommend seeing your veterinarian for a recheck. Struvite stones often form secondary to a urinary tract infection so your vet may want to test Beemo’s urine to make sure there is not currently an infection present. If you’re able to save a stone for your vet they might want to send it out for analysis - occasionally dogs can have multiple types of bladder stones and it’s possible your vet may want to change the diet or add a supplement if this is the case.

The recurrence was very quick indeed. Sometimes such a fast recurrence is related to bacterial infection that is sitting deep in the bladder wall. For that reason we often test the stones for presence of bacteria, or we take a sample of the bladder wall to be tested for presence of infection. I assume that test was done, but if not it would be really worth to put Zucchini on a long course of antibiotics. In some dogs it does make a big difference in relation to recurrence of bladder stones.

Hello. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, some of these dogs keep developing stones, & we just do not know the total reason & mechanism for this. So you are perfectly right to feel confused, & frustrated with this. The Royal Canin S/O has been one of the best options in terms of preventing stones through the diet, & of course, the more water he takes in, the more water there is to flush the oxalate elements out of his bladder before stones reoccur. Sometimes we do recommend potassium citrate, if urine pH is consistently lower than 6.5, & some newer thinking is to add hydrochlorothiazide if he does seem to be redeveloping urolithiasis frequently & he does not have high blood calcium levels. You could monitor his urine for blood with urine dip strips manufactured for this purpose ( your vet can help with this ). A full urinalysis should be done every 3-6 months to keep pH between 6.5 & 8 & to maintain urine specific gravity to 1.020 or lower. Imaging, with either ultrasound or x-rays every 6-12 months is useful to identify very small stones that can generally be removed without surgery.removed . Hopefully, Casper will remain stone free for a very long time. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.