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Sophie has not been doing very well in her housebreaking, and urinating in her crate every night even if I get up midway through the night to take her out. Today I took a urine sample to her vet's and sure enough she has a bladder infection. He says her PH level were normal, so it had not gotten worse case scenerio yet (bladder X rays and cranberry juice etc.). She is on clavamox for 10 days, after which he will want to check her urine again. So hopefully soon she will be all better and I'm sure we will have much more success with her housebreaking once this is taken care of.

I'm glad you found the cause of Sophie's urinating problem. Once the UTI infection clears you should have much more success with the potty training. Please keep us updated.
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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.

>>Sophie has not been doing very well in her housebreaking, and urinating in her crate every night even if I get up midway through the night to take her out. Today I took a urine sample to her vet's and sure enough she has a bladder infection. He says her PH level were normal, so it had not gotten worse case scenerio yet (bladder X rays and cranberry juice etc.). She is on clavamox for 10 days, after which he will want to check her urine again. So hopefully soon she will be all better and I'm sure we will have much more success with her housebreaking once this is taken care of.

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Be very alert to recurrence of this infection after just 10 days of antibiotic. I had a dog with UTI once who was easy to collect a urine specimen from, and a very careful vet. We did about 6-7 urinalyses on her (no cultures), and he changed antibiotics I think three times when a urine check would show that the current antibiotic wasn't really getting it. We followed up about 4-6 weeks of antibiotics with another urinalysis later to make SURE it was gone, and it did not come back.

These infections are often secondary to something else, especially in very young dogs. With my current dog, early spay caused a fold/crease at the vulva, a set-up for lifelong infections in many dogs. I was already using apple cidar vinegar very successfully to clean my other female each day, but at first the young girl fussed so much that I didn't do her.

Then I started bribing the youngster with treats associated with the cleaning--just a good, quick swabbing with real apple cidar vinegar on tissue or paper towels once per day--and after about a month the bribes were no longer needed. It doesn't hurt the dog.

She had been licking herself so much, and the vet said we'd have to watch that closely and do surgery if she had infections from it. But the apple cidar vinegar came to the rescue, she stopped licking (except for what most dogs do if they can reach, just a minor amount of cleaning themselves), and now she's 6 1/2 years old with never an infection.

The daily cleansing would not hurt your dog, and I'd encourage you to add it to your routine. Do not even think about substituting it for veterinary care when the dog shows the slightest sign of infection, though! Untreated urinary tract infections can cause cause kidney damage and shorten your dog's lifespan! And untreated vaginal infections can extend to the uterus and cause deadly uterine infections in intact females.

If you do the apple cidar vinegar, do the vulva first and THEN clean the anus. Going the other way would spread e coli bacteria from the anus to the vulva--very, very bad! This is one reason we don't diaper train puppies! It would cause horrible infections.

So do the anus last. Cleansing this area is also very beneficial to your dog, either male or female, and can spare the dog some very nasty infections in that area. Some of our dogs are built in such a way that they cannot reach to clean there, especially the males. So they get itchy, they scoot, and they break the skin and get the bacteria under the skin. Some of them get very sick. You can stop all that before it starts by simply cleaning the dog here daily. I keep the apple cidar vinegar with my daily combing stuff, in a spray bottle that makes it very easy to put it exactly where I want it on a folded pad of paper towel or tissue. I've been doing this for my dogs for over 10 years now, and have never seen any ill effect from it.
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Kathy Diamond Davis, author, "Therapy Dogs: Training Your Dog to Reach Others," 2nd edition, and the free Canine Behavior Series articles at http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=SRC&S=1&SourceID=47

Yikes, so many antibiotics!! I'm on antibiotics right now and I am really having some awful tummy aches!! I try to remember to take probiotic tablets several times a day, but it being "small, insignificant me" I often forget. Any time any of the animals are on antibiotics I make sure to give them the probiotics. My own stomach aches from these antibiotics are all the convincing I need- I will not ever give antibiotics without probiotics! I get chewable ones from GNC, they're strawberry flavored and all my animals like them. I love them, in fact I ought to go get one now.
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Kadee Sedtal
home of old lady Lucy (boxer/lab/garbage disposal), pretty girl Fancy (beagle), the rats- Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Pachebel, Fillmore, Norbert, and baby Franz, the mice- Vivaldi, Brahms, Schubert, Bartok, Rasputin, Johann, Chaminade, Dorothy, Glenda, and Em, and the *adorable* winter white dwarf hamster- Feather
"I wish I had a dollar for every time I spent a dollar, because then, yahoo! I'd have all my money back." -Jack Handey

Thanks for all the advice!! Well the vet said clavamox for 10 days but he gave me like a 14 or 15 day supply... I can't remember right now how many there were, but a lot more than I needed for 10 days I know that much. I noticed that literally within 24-48 hours after beginning the antibiotics she was doing much much better about going potty in the house, she maybe has one accident a day (none yet today knock on wood) and if I get up midway through the night she does great but if left in there for more than 6 hours she will pee... but that's not her fault. Only problem so far is I think she is starting to catch onto the fact that her special cheese snack has something not so tasty in the middle!!

>>Thanks for all the advice!! Well the vet said clavamox for 10 days but he gave me like a 14 or 15 day supply... I can't remember right now how many there were, but a lot more than I needed for 10 days I know that much. I noticed that literally within 24-48 hours after beginning the antibiotics she was doing much much better about going potty in the house, she maybe has one accident a day (none yet today knock on wood) and if I get up midway through the night she does great but if left in there for more than 6 hours she will pee... but that's not her fault. Only problem so far is I think she is starting to catch onto the fact that her special cheese snack has something not so tasty in the middle!!

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For probiotics so that my dogs don't get diarrhea from antibiotics, I go to the health food store and get a very high-count (in organisms per capsule) acidolphilus, multidophilus, superdophilus--the name will be something like that. If it's not refrigerated, it's worthless. It tastes good, so I just open the capsule and dump it onto the dog's food. Works great.
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Kathy Diamond Davis, author, "Therapy Dogs: Training Your Dog to Reach Others," 2nd edition, and the free Canine Behavior Series articles at http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=SRC&S=1&SourceID=47