Diagnosing and treating urinary incontinence

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Some dog owners fear that urinary incontinence is a natural result of aging and delay taking their dog to the veterinarian. While many dogs do develop age-related problems, there are many other causes to consider too. Urinary incontinence is easily treated, and the medications are not expensive, so the sooner you get your dog to the veterinarian, the better.

Causes of incontinence in dogs

Before you jump to conclusions, first make sure that the dog is indeed suffering from incontinence. A dog who is frightened or feels threatened may urinate. This is called submissive urination and it mainly affects young dogs. It is normally something they outgrow. A male dog that is not neutered will mark his territory, or a dog may simply need more housetraining.

Sometimes age does play a part in an older dog who may be suffering from canine cognitive dysfunction and simply forgets his housetraining. If all of these causes are ruled out, your dog will likely be diagnosed with urinary incontinence.

The first thing your veterinarian will do is perform a urinalysis and urine culture. The urinalysis finds certain cell types and biochemical elements in the dog's urine while the culture grows the bacteria in the urine for identification purposes and to test different antibiotics to see which one would be most effective in fighting that particular strain.

Most incontinence is caused by:

• A urinary tract infection (usually a bladder infection)
• A weak bladder sphincter (common in aging female dogs)
• Excessive water consumption
• Spinal cord disease

Bladder infection

A bladder infection is a common cause of urinary incontinence in young adult female dogs and is generally diagnosed with a urine culture, although signs of the infection will usually show up in the urinalysis. In this case, the urine culture will confirm the diagnosis, identify the infecting bacteria and list the antibiotics that will be most effective in clearing the infection.

There are usually several choices of antibiotics and your veterinarian will choose the one most suited to your dog. The dog takes one to three weeks of medication, after which you should have a second culture done to ensure that the infection is truly cleared up.

Incontinence caused by a bladder  [Continued]

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