Well, drat.  I was out all day yesterday and missed the call from his onco reporting his blood and urine.

Good news: his bloodwork is good!  YES!  After nearly 8 months on leukeran, his WBC is strong.  That's my boy!

Meh news: a little blood in his urine.

OK, so when they tried to get urine from him (collecting in a bowl), they missed it MANY times (for an untrained eye to tripawd boys, I guess it's hard to tell when they pee!).  When they returned him to me, we walked him and I shouted when he peed.  They stuck the bowl under and probably got 1mL.  At this point, they'd missed his pee so many times that by the time he came to me, he was "blowing dust" - as we like to call it.  His tank was empty, but for a boy dog not to mark like 50x at the vet's....he tried!  So this 1mL of dust-pee had a little blood in it.

I'll be calling on Tuesday when his onco is back to hear her thoughts.  We see his regular vet in 1.5 weeks so I'll certainly have another urine test done - this time, hopefully with fresh pee, not the barely-there leftovers!

One side of my mind thinks that ANY blood isn't OK, no matter if it's from a full bladder or one that's been demanded to pee to the nth degree.

The other side of me thinks that this teeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiny sample was collected by extreme measures and if a capillary burst, that makes sense.

I plan to collect a sample this week (eeek!  never done that!) and bring it to his vet.  Then about a week later, I'll have them collect another.  I'm confident his pee will pass all tests.  I'd feel better having 2 clean tests to rule out this weirdo 1mL collection.

Just keeping you updated!

~ Katy & pee-master-even-when-there's-nothing-to-squeeze-out Jackson

Hey all,

I just wanted to follow up: Jackson has now had 2 urinary checks since his onco appt to find more about the blood in his pee.  There hasn't been anymore blood.  Just as I suspected!  He tried so hard to mark outside the onco's office that he probably strained some capillaries and they burst.  No biggie.  He's ok!

Well... he has a few struvite crystals in his urine (2-4 - but, I don't know the units here.  Ooops) and this goes back to at least Nov 2013.  Crystals in urine MAY mean that he's more likely to produce a bladder stone.  OUCHY.  So for the next month, we'll add water to his meals to get more fluids into him to keep things flushing.  He's not much of a drinker anyway.  In a month, I'll collect more pee and it will be examined in-house, immediately, at his regular vet.  Pee that sits around (ie, subjected to shipping to another lab) can also crystallize.  He has no symptoms of any problems, so this is why we're not rushing for a bladder ultrasound or xray.  Maybe I'll get creative and make him a daily, dilute no-sodium chicken stock popsicle treat?

I've also rehearsed that if he does need an xray or ultrasound that they are NOT allowed to look at his lungs.  HA! I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!

His vet also now runs blood tests for all sorts of critters, including Lyme.  Whew.  No lyme for him!  Check it out: http://www.idex.....SSOTOKEN=0

We've again opted to titer his parvo/distemper.  He was safe last year, so we didn't vaccine unnecessarily.  We'll know his titer in about a month for this vaccine.

Unlike last year, he has no worms in his poo.  Way to go!  Just like last year, he had no signs/symptoms of worms, so it was a huge shock he had them.  Last year, we got Novartis to pay for his deworming, since he's always been on those meds.  For much more info, see: http://tripawds.....know-this/

~ Katy & J-pee-wad