Re: Dogs and UT

Have you ever had to catch it for a vet analysis? I know that's hard. My little Anja (her name, not mine) passed with our help a few months ago at the ripe old age of 16, but I remember trying to do that with her, I think at the time it was with little sponges. She was a paper-trained Yorkie, so I would try to catch her in the act and scoot in the sample-catcher under her butt. I don't know if you could do that with your dog outside, like with a pie plate or plastic-coated paper plate. It might freak her out, I think whether you can accomplish something like that has a lot to do with the dog's personality and tolerance. Anja got rather jumpy and nervous in her old age, so that sort of thing was near impossible. Someone on a pet forum mentioned I try giving her Transfer Factor Plus (immune support w/mushrooms, colostrum, etc.) as she was declining with her chronic kidney failure, and I do think that it helped, along with A*****ose, I would think that would be supportive of other conditions. We had her on a raw diet since about age 3, and I still think that makes so much sense, but she no longer tolerated raw in her last few years and we had to start cooking it. She had also started losing use of her hind legs and actually recovered dramatically from that once we started adding some high quality canned dog food at the vet's suggestion, I think she was deficient in minerals or something on the raw diet. If I ever get another dog, I'm going to re-think the raw thing and do more research on that topic, since I think you have to provide a wide variety of gross animal parts for a dog to be healthy and get all its nutrients on that diet. Our holistic vet also said every dog is different, some do well like that, others don't. I suspect the smaller purebeds, like Anja, are more delicate. Bred pretty far down from the wolf & wild dog. :)