help - 13 yr old Chihuahua having bladder trouble

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Help - has anyone had experience with or advice about older dog suddenly
wetting the carpet in middle of night or early morning?

Background - we have a 13 year od Chi named Katie who is now wetting the carpet.
She has always been well house trained.

In the past few days, she has wet on the carpet some time early in the morning.
Last night around 12 I took Katie for a walk, and she got to urinate plenty of times while we were out. In spite of that nice long walk, she still wet my daughter's bed last night sometime in the middle of the night, and the carpet some time after that before 8 AM this morning.

We had another Chi that was several years older, and who had some hernias, and that
dog became incontinent as she got very old. It is really hard to manage. For now, my daughter is going to get Katie some doggie diapers, but this appears to be a health issue.

Katie's food:

Some people food (my daughter says this is a no no) as long as it doesn't have onions or peppers
or stuff like that, just basic meat scraps. *I am going to stop giving her any people food to rule this out as a causal factor, but people food is not a new thing for Katie.

Neutro Natural choice, for Senior Dogs

The ingredients -

Ground rice, chicken meal, rice bran, oatmeal, poultry fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols, a source of natural vitamin E), sunflower oil (preserved with mixed tocopherols, a source of natural vitamin E), natural flavors, oat bran, dried egg product, potassium chloride, choline chloride, dried kelp, iron sulfate, zinc sulfate, ascorbic acid (source of vitamin C), zinc proteinate, vitamin E supplement, manganese proteinate, manganous oxide, niacin, glucosamine hydrochloride, chondroitin sulfate, calcium pantothenate, vitamin A supplement, copper sulfate, copper proteinate, vitamin B12 supplement, biotin, vitamin D3 supplement, riboflavin (source of vitamin B2), thiamine mononitrate (source of vitamin B1), pyridoxine ;hydrochloride, sodium selenite, calcium iodate, folic acid, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of vitamin K activity).

http://www.petco.com/product/2518/Nutro-Natural-Choice-Senior-Dog-Food.aspx

If anyone has some experience with this, or some advice, we would appreciate it.

Thanks

[GardeningGal]

1. Personally, I would get her off the Nutro food.

I know many people like it and have not had a problem but my shih tzu started having seizures on it. It's a long story but I switched my dogs food to Innova and he is no longer on any medication and no more seizures. Here's a link of other people's experience with Nutro.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/nutro.html

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. I had just switched her to the Nutro Natural Choice for Seniors

and see several posts over at that website about that making their dog have different problems,
many with urinary problems.

Also diabetes, and kidney problems.

Agh. Out it goes.

[ehrnst]

2. Spayed females sometimes develop incontinence with age

My pooch Ethel, a 9 year old developed this, and the vet put her on Proin, which cleared it up.

Here are some other causes:

http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/ClientEd/incont.aspx

[MiniMe]

3. I'd get her checked at the vet for a bladder infection

Just to rule that out. :hug:

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. I'm taking her off the nutro, and taking her to the vet

thanks!

[MiniMe]

6. How is Katie doing?

[roody]

7. My elderly poodle started peeing the bed.

He got a prescription and a friend told me it was a diuretic. I became more attentive to taking him outside and picking up the water at night, and did not give him very many pills. He died a year and a half later of kidney failure at age 16.

[njlib]

8. Fresh parsley

A friend of mine suggested it when my 10 year old female started to have "wetting issues" about 8 months ago. It somehow enables them to completely empty the bladder and it worked like a charm for us. I gave her a tablespoon of fresh chopped parsley (she's 57 lbs., so you might be able to get away with giving less) wrapped in a peanut butter sandwich, since that's the only way either of my two babies will take any sort of medicine. The peanut butter sandwich was just enough peanut butter to make the parsley stick, on a small piece of a piece of bread, folded in half. After about two weeks, no more wetting and she's been fine ever since! It was cheap, easy, all natural and it worked!

Best of luck to you and your baby!