Frequent uti & paralysis

[Ella]

hi. My dog suffered from a disc rupture last December. After surgery, she sadly did not regain any sensation in her hind legs. While I know that she is more prone to utis & that it will be an on-going problem; however, I did not expect it to be a constant battle. Since her surgery, I would say that the longest stretch of healthy time is at most 3 weeks. At all the other times, she is with or recovering from an infection. Our vet has attempted pulse therapy but another uti that is resistant to the current antibiotic always develops. We have her on 2 cranberry pills a day, forta flora and often give her yoghurt with breakfast. How are other owners dealing with this? Is it common for other paralysed dogs to develop a new uti so frequently? It so frustrating and heartbreaking at the same time.

[Bobbie]

It seems to be more common in females than in males, and in some females more than others. They probably get infected from their own stool since it is so close to the urinary tract in females. It may help to clean her well after each time she poops.

How long does she stay on an antibiotic for a UTI? Has the vet been sending out cultures to choose the best antibiotic?

Besides acidifiers, D-mannose may help. Also, try to get her to drink more. Flavoring the water helps. You could use chicken broth diluted with water, or mix pumpkin or yogurt in the water, and just add water to everything you feed her. (Pour it on her kibble.) A urologist told me the very best thing is drinking lots of water.

[slshepherds]

Hi

I'm Joanne and I have 4 paraplegics/paretics who don't have bladder control. Three have no problems with UTI's one, my male Labrador, Carl does. As you are unfortunately finding out not only are paraplegics more prone to UTI's but they can quickly become antibiotic resistant. It has been a long road with Carl, he has had a resistant UTI (E-coli) for about 3 years now (he too only manages a couple of weeks before recurrence) that we cannot clear up, rather we work to keep him asymptomatic.

Every dog is different so what worked for Carl may not work, or be best for another dog. When Carl first got a UTI we did a urine culture and treated as you would for any dog who had a UTI. With each recurrence we re-cultured, gave an appropriate antibiotic but increased the time he was on antibiotics (~ a month for each course). Carl is at the point where he is resistant to every drug except meropenem and Chloramphenicol. For me Chloramphenicol is not worth the risk to my health so we go with injectable merepenem for up to a month, but only when he is symptomatic (foul smelling urine, uncomfortable when expressed). Outside of that we use a very low dose of an antibiotic every day, all the time - at least we did until a couple of months ago when even that stopped working. Carl was seen by a veterinary urologist and we are now working outside the box and are catheterising him and infusing his bladder every other day (thank goodness Carl is male, this would not be feasible with a female).

I'm in this for the long haul and just keep plugging on, trying whatever we can. Perhaps there is a veterinary urologist local to you who could advise your vet or see your pup?

Joanne

[Ella]

Thanks for the advise. I only heard about d-mannose yesterday and have bought a bottle. We are waiting for another culture and sensitivity test for her current infection but have started with the d- mannose now in hopes of preventing another in the future. We usually plan to take antibiotics for a month but it rarely ever takes that long before another resistant infection sets in. Financially it has been a strain but we will do our best to keep on going. She is worth it!

[critters]

Some critters really like those fountain-type bowls and will drink more that way.