Diagnosis and Surgery

Symptoms

We found out Ritzy had bladder stones because he had peed indoors (not being able to hold it is a sign of bladder stones) and there was blood in his urine (another sign of bladder stones). We were immediately upset, but it was late at night and Ritzy was acting fine, so we took him to the vet in the morning.

Ritzy did show other symptoms that we didn't associate to a medical condition. He would urinate many times while outside but we attributed that to marking while on our walk. He also, during play, would walk off with his tail between his legs and go lay down when I would make him jump, etc. - we thought it had something to do with our toddler wabbling about and thinking he was in trouble or something, but now we know that the jumping and excited play would cause the stones to rumble around and cause him a lot of discomfort and pain.

Tesing and Diagnosis

The vet did a urinalysis and found calcium oxalate crystals present. We authorized a full blood work up and a urine culture to be sent out to a lab.

Our vet spoke to us about calcium oxalate stones and recommended we have surgery performed on Ritzy right away and we set it for the next week.

Things didn't feel right with our vet, she wouldn't really answer our questions and seemed to want to perform surgery more for her paycheck than to save Ritzy, so we looked around and found another vet and this vet was a GODSEND and a blessing. This vet was caring and thoughtful and incredibly charming AND half the price which we were so thankful for.

We picked up Ritzy's test results and file from our old vet and brought them to the new one. Ritzy's blood work showed severe dehydration. This is something that puzzled my husband and I because Ritzy always has a bowl of fresh water available and we change the water frequently to keep it cold and fresh. But we just found that Ritzy is not a dog that drinks often, we started noticing that after having it pointed out to us and it became quite clear, he drinks maybe once a day and that is not enough and could be part of the cause of the stones. His urinalysis also indicated a urine pH level of 9 (normal range is between 6.5 - 7).

Surgery

Ritzy had his surgery on Wednesday, July 15, 2009. He had 4 small stones. I have a picture of the stones and will post it in another posting. The vet sent them off to the University of Minnesota for further testing to verify that they were, indeed, calcium oxalate.

Recovery

The recovery process was VERY hard for Ritzy. The pain was unbearable and the pain medications did not even touch his pain. There were many nights and many tears while we watching Ritzy scream and cry in pain - not easy at all. Ritzy was on Clavamox for the inflammation the stones caused in his bladder and Previcox for pain medication.

Food and Follow up Testing

We had him on Purina NF after the surgery. A mixture of canned and wet. The canned contains water so it should help with fluid consumption. For dogs prone to bladder stones you want to increase water consumption and add more trips outside to go potty to keep the bladder flushed, so if crystals are present, they are unable to form stones.

Purina NF went well for a while. Ritzy seemed to like it, but after about a week we noticed he had diarrhea and he was vomiting, so we switched foods.

The vet then put Ritzy on Hill's W/D which is formulated for struvite bladder stones - wet and dry. This was about one week or so after the surgery. They performed a urinalysis to see how he was doing and his urine was free of crystals but showed mild irritation which the vet contributed to inflammation from the surgery. They wanted to be certain stones had not formed again, so they also performed some x-rays tests and did not find any stone formations present. His urine pH was 8.

When my vet received the stone analysis back from the University of Minnesota she confirmed with me that they were, indeed, calcium oxalate stones so Ritzy was changed to Hill's Prescription Diet U/D. We do a mixture of wet and dry and Ritzy is doing very well on it. We went for a follow up urinalysis 2 weeks after the last one and his pH was an 8 still and also was showing mild irritation again, so they wanted us to come back in 2 more weeks for another urinalysis.

We went in for a follow up urinalysis and Ritzy's pH registered at 6, so it is going down, but we need to actually keep it around 6.5 - 7.0 in order to make sure his urine is not too acidic, which would be the ideal environment for calcium oxalate stones - we don't want that. No crystals were present and his specific gravity was 1.036 which is fantastic. The vet was very optimistic and said she wouldn't need to see us again until December for another urinalysis, but for my own piece of mind, we will be going back in October (two months after final urinalysis) to see how things are going.