UTI

[Katie]

My Luna is 11 months old - spayed at 6 months.

On Thursday evening around 5 Luna had a sudden need to urinate.  She wanted out about every 15 minutes and always seemed to pee.  She slept thru the night but Friday Morning the same thing started.  About every 10-15 minutes, she would ring the bell.

I called the vet and they suggested bringing in a urine sample because they were booked up but made me an appt. Monday.

Boy, was it hard to get that urine sample!  I discovered that although she was squatting, she was not having much output.  It took me about 2 hours to get a very tiny amount.  I didn't think it would be enough but they said they would work with it. Around 4 the vet called and we discussed what was going on.  She said the PH was elevated which is indicative of UTI.  She gave me amoxicillian 250mg 2 x a day for 2 weeks with a repeat urine in one week.

When you do think the amoxicillian will start to help her - she is still having frequent urination.  She did vomit after her morning dose as I gave it to her on an empty stomach.  I am also giving proviable.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

It will take a few days for the antibiotics to have a noticeable effect. Be sure to allow at least two hours between the proviable and the amoxicillin, and longer is better. 

[Katie]

Thanks Karen.  We went to the vet today.  Luna is probably only 25% better and the vet thought she should have been better than that.  Luna now asks to go out about every 2 hours and attempts to urinate about 4-5 times while we are out.   We did an x-ray to rule out stones as they did see crystals in her urine.  x-ray was clear.  We decided to double her amoxicillin (250 to 500 twice daily) as that would be the best on her stomach and cost effective.  She indicated that stronger meds would really tear her sensitive tummy up.  I'm to follow up with them on Wednesday.  I also notice her poo is looking darker in color. She did vomit today but I think it was because we were at the vets office for 2 hours and she was just worked up.  Do you have any suggestions for an antibiotic or do you think we are on the right track? 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Recommending particular antibiotics for a UTI would be way outside the scope of my knowledge, lol. 

I hope the increased dosage helps and Luna gets better quickly. 

[Nancy & Echo]

No antibacterial agent is effective against all bacteria.  In most clinical situations, they take a urine sample and try to grow the bacterial culprit, and see which antibiotics (if any) are effective against it.  But they can't always see the culprit in a urine sample, let alone get it to grow out.

I'm definitely not an expert in canine care - I work in a (human) hospital.

Fleming, who discovered penicillin, in his 1945 Nobel prize speech, predicted the emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

Here's a list of commonly used antibiotics for small animals http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/pharmacology/systemic_pharmacothe...

In this study of  78 (20% of the canine infections) they were able to culture out the bacteria. All were resistant to at least one antibiotic, and 77% were multidrug resistant.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20885826

They have documented cases where the human and dog traded multi-drug resistant bacteria between them.

As I'm sure you know, bacteria are becoming more and more drug resistant.  Eventually, we will be losing the usefulness of antibiotics, and leaving the antibiotic age. 

Still, urinary tract infections do have the advantage that most (not all) antibiotics are concentrated in the urine, so you can often achieve higher levels of antibiotic in the urine.  But, if you have a highly resistant strain, this won't matter much.

Some people, especially those with indwelling catheters, get chronic, highly resistant urinary tract infections, which can be very difficult to treat.

[Joann Valerio]

Did the Vet indicate what causes UTI in pets? Thanks!