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Why is my dog still showing symptoms even though vet tests are normal?

Updated on September 23rd, 2025

Pet's info: Dog | Boxer | Female | spayed | 8 years and 9 months old | 72 lbs

My dog has been drinking lots, peeing lots, coughing, has a cloudy left eye and leaves lots of saliva in the water bowl. We have taken her to the vet and all of her tests (bloods,urine and nerve responses) have come back fine. Any ideas ? Also we have had a heat wave for the last week or so. Many many thanks, Stefan

1 Answer

Most Helpful Answer

Chad Brown, DVM

Answered By Chad Brown, DVM

Veterinarian

Published on July 10th, 2018

Hello and I applaud you for being such a good owner to Tilly. The clinical signs of peeing a lot and drinking a lot is also called polyuria and polydipsia. One of the diseases that is not picked up on a regular blood work up done in a general veterinary practice is called Cushing’s disease. Cushing’s disease can only be diagnosed with an ACTH stim test or a LDDS test. You may want to ask your veterinarian if these tests were run on your last visit. If not, it may be worthwhile to check for this disease.

Sadly, boxers are also quite Portland to getting cancer internally. Cancer anywhere inside of a dog can cause them to drink and pee a lot also.

As for the coughing issue, sometimes he can cause this coughing but just to be safe I would have the veterinarian do some chest x-rays, and ECG, etc. to make sure that there is nothing wrong with your dogs thoracic cavity that would cause the coughing. If you do not want to do these tests for the cough, you may ask to have your veterinarian start a 21 to 30 day course of anabiotic‘s just in case it is infectious bronchitis or another upper respiratory disease.

The cloudy I would be difficult to give you any kind of opinion on without a picture. Two of the most common conditions for cloudy eyes are cataracts and lenticular degeneration. Please have your veterinarian perform an ophthalmic examination to get some insight on what is causing the cloudiness.

I realize that I have giving you a lot of information. The main point that I want to make sure I get across is that blood testing and your analysis will Not pick up all diseases and I urge you to ask your veterinarian to either run more tests or refer you to an internal medicine specialist

I hope I have provided you with some helpful information.
Vote Icon1Pet Parents found this answer helpful

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