Urination Issues

It is 6:00 am, you are stumbling in your bare feet toward the wake-up juice and you step in a puddle of warm liquid on the kitchen floor. After a few seconds it finally registers that what you are standing in is not spilled coffee. There are only two of you up at this hour, you and your trusty dog, WeeWee. One of you has had an accident and after a quick check you confirm that you are not the culprit. You ask yourself why did my dog do such a thing? Is he still mad because I only took him on three walks yesterday instead of the usual four strolls? Did he find out that some of his other dog-friends get to sleep in their master's bed and I will not allow it? Does he not like to be awakened this early in the morning? Does he want me to adopt another dog or two so he will have some buddies?

The questions continue to fly through your head until finally you decide to ask him yourself. WeeWee why did you peepee in the house? The response he gives you is a lick (morning-breath is bad enough, but dog-morning-breath can be a real eye-opener), a smile and two wags of his happy-tail. It turns out this is his pat answer to everything. Where do you go from here? You go wash your feet, and while doing so you decide that your not-so-trusty dog has an attitude problem and you are going to conquer this display of unappreciation with dominance and behavioral modification that will show him who's boss. While drying your feet, you wake-up and remember reading someplace that if a dog inappropriately urinates in the house there is a chance that he may have a medical condition causing the problem and he can't help himself.

So you decide to start helping your furry friend by calling your friendly Veterinarian. He tells you that this type of house-soiling problem could be either behavioral or medically driven. You tell the doctor that you have already asked WeeWee why he peepeed and from the answer you received you can not determine which it is. The professional on the other end of the line tells you that you have done all you can at home and that other measures are necessary to be taken to get answers. It is recommended that you take WeeWee to the Vet for an examination and possibly some tests.

The gentle doctor gives WeeWee a physical examination and asks for a specimen. After WeeWee gives his pat answer to all questions (even hard questions containing medical terms) you, WeeWee and a technician go on a walk in search of liquid gold. This valuable substance is determined to be nearby when it is observed that WeeWee's nose goes to the ground and his rear leg goes to the sky. Great catch!! Midair and midstream it doesn't get any better than this thinks the technician. You and the technician do a High Five (of course you are sure that the technician is using the hand other than the one that did the catch) and WeeWee is congratulated because he is the play maker that made it happen. Once liquid gold is in the laboratory it is called urine and an analysis reveals that WeeWee has a urinary tract infection. It was explained that infections as well as several other ailments of the urinary tract can cause inflammation and spasms in the bladder and urethra leading WeeWee to experience a sudden sense of urgency that he is unable to control.

Antibiotics were prescribed which WeeWee took as if they were candy and his nasty habit of using the kitchen floor as a bathroom was ended once and for all while the both of you, along with the other six greyhounds you adopted shortly after this incident, lived on in complete harmony thereafter.

The moral of the story is that if your dog goes to the bathroom in the house, he/she most probably did not mean to and he/she may have a medical problem that needs to be properly diagnosed and treated before it leads to other potentially irreversible problems, either medical or behavioral.