Severe................

........urinary tract infection, so much so that she, my dog Coco, is pissing blood.  That's the verdict of the doc.  Handed me a bottle of pills, told me to give them to her once a day until they are gone.  Make sure she is drinking water - which is the first thing she did when she got home, stuck her head in the 5 gallon bucket (when you have 3 large dogs, you go with large quantities of water available, those little water dishes do nothing for dogs that size) and started drinking away.

She would not, unfortunately, touch any food.  She hasn't eaten since Friday.  I just tried giving her some chicken and then tried giving her a doggy biscuit, both her favorites, wouldn't even think about it.  I can't force the dog to eat.  That's the plain and simple truth of it, she will eat when she is going to eat.  But I am going to try some canned dog food anyway, in a few moments, as she has always liked that stuff as well.  She is going to have to stay outside tonight, unfortunately, because she is pissing small quantities of blood all over the place and I cannot have that in my house.  I love dogs, but I don't love them that much.  Hopefully the antibiotics will start to work quickly and perhaps we can get this problem behind us and she will start eating again.

Tuesday 2/28/2012

I'm sitting in a parking lot, down the street from the vet.  In between deliveries, I ran home today, got Coco, hauled her over to the animal hospital and then went back to work.

The vet called about an hour ago saying her bowels are pretty much all cleared up, but now she is pissing blood. Can't catch a break here, can we?  He did an X-ray to determine that there isn't anything in there at this point.   So now?  Blood panels to see if there is anything going on with her kidneys. If you think that all of this doesn't sound cheap, you would be right.  $150 for the blood panels plus a check-up/re-visit fee and who knows whatever else.  The vet is hoping it will be a simple matter of giving her antibiotics, but he was hesitant to do that without checking her kidneys first.

Whatever the case, I would like this to be the final visit - for a long time anyway - to the vet for this particular problem and hoping that there isn't going to be some sort of negative result from those blood tests.

I'm pretty much beat at this point.  Work yesterday took it all out of me.  Now I am getting what appears to be a chest cold and still dealing with this dog.  Anyway, I decided to simply wait for the news and hopefully take the dog home rather than go home and then have to go back to the vet's office. 

There isn't any other news because I am too tired to even think about anything else excepting that there is the small groups at church tonight, but if I don't catch a second wind here, I won't be going, instead, I will be going to sleep early. 

That's it. I'm going to take a nap in the car while waiting as I am so incredibly sleepy right now!