PatricksMom

I would third the no asprin, but you can call your vet in the morning and see what she thinks about prescribing something, there are other good options.

Henry and Leo are having dentals tomorrow, the first time since they've been with us and the first time we've had this vet put anyone under anethesia. They are expected to be uncomplicated with no extractions and I've gone over the anesthesia protocal. Good thoughts for them and their enormously nervous mommy would be very appreciated.

I'd take my dog to an evet with those symptoms, if you have a decent one available to you. Otherwise, I'd take her in first thing in the AM. Keep us posted on how she's doing.

Yep, Leo tends to pee on his legs (boys!) so I keep baby wipes by the door for in between bath cleanups.

In my experience, this is an excellent quality in a vet, one of the first things I look for--willing to admit they don't know something and research it and get back to me. I hope that makes you feel a bit better, dentals make a lot of us nervous every time even though things almost always go smoothly. I'm freaking out because my boys are having their first post-adoption dentals and I've had greyhounds for 12 years now. I used to be so nervous I stayed in the waiting room the entire time, although I have calmed down a bit.

I'm so sorry. Godspeed little one.

Okay, this sounds crazy, but I had a trainer show it to me and it worked. No matter what we did, Patrick could not understand that we wanted him to lie down. So we used a chair, and he had to crawl progressively further under it to get the treat. He pretty quickly realized what we wanted when we made the down motion after that.

I'll look into that, thanks for sharing your experience. I've talked to two vets now and neither recommend anyone local for dealing with Leo's issues in a positive way.

I've had four greys, Patrick did fine with a 4 foot fence (I think he would have been okay with shorter). Murphy had zero interest in being outside if I wasn't glued to my side. My current boys are in an apartment, but show no interest in going over the 3 foot dog park fence (of course they are watched very, very closely). The house we're buying has a 6 foot privacy fence, but we're debating how high a fence we need around the pool.

I'm weighing in for humans only, but it may relate to greyhounds. Trazadone is frequently given multiple times of day for extended periods of time in humans for anxiety and/or sleep issues (and also for some kinds of chronic pain like fibromylangia). It doesn't typically cause the sedative effects of a benzo.

That'd be great.

Thanks, I'm going to order her book.

Reading through a few threads, I've seen people recommend some really interesting books and articles to help us understand our dogs better. I looked and couldn't find one already, so I thought it might be useful to start a seperate thread with people's reading recommendations.

NC is actually several hours away at best, but thank you for offering.

What a sweet looking girl. Best wishes for you and your anxious mom (I'm the same way, every time).

So, Leo had another clear accident in the house, followed by hesitation, followed by lots of peeing. So off to the vet we go tomorrow, obviously he's still not feeling well and maybe that's adding to his issues. He finishes the second antibiotic this evening so we'll see what she wants to do. Giselle, thank you for the list of questions, I'll keep those handy.

Jen, that is very helpful, thank you for spelling all that out. Right now the boys are crated when we aren't home (which is rarely for more than an hour a day) because my gut feeling is that they're not ready to be loose. I hadn't though of getting out the Kong, I'll try that. I'm not sure what could be stressing him out. He's not thrilled when we leave, but it doesn't seem to be SA, he just prefers us to be home, and he's otherwise a very laid back dog unless he's around other breeds. We do have a lot of other dogs in our complex, so fortunately or unfortunately, he's encountering several dogs on most of his walks. I know it won't fix everything, but we're in the process of buying a house with a large yard and I'm hoping lots of daily off leash time in addition to walking will help somewhat.

So we're realizing that in many ways Patrick was a super easy dog. Murphy was very easy, Henry's been pretty good. But we're having a lot of trouble with Leo. He's aggressive to non-greyhounds. He's leash walked and so far we haven't had a problem keeping him away from other dogs, but yesterday got so agitated on leash he snapped at Henry. And while he's still being treated for a UTI he clearly can control himself but he's taking up peeing in his crate whenever he doesn't like being crated. In general, I'm fine with not crating, but I'm not sure that's a good idea right now. And his issues are making training hard with Henry, they like each other, but Henry's regressed since we adopted Leo. We talked about it last night and realized we need help and we can't take the boys to an obedience class because of Leo's issues. I've contacted a trainer who referred us to a fellow trainer who's had greyhounds. Does this seem like a good place to start, with private obedience work? Or should we be looking for a behavioralist? I don't want to give the impression that Leo's a bad dog--he really is lovely and sweet and cuddly, I think most of it is our fault because we're not very good at training and we probably should have called in a professional sooner. And he used to be very mouthy, so I trained him to let me hold his snout instead, which he loves, but I'm not sure how to correct him when we're walking then. We've made a lot of progress on not jumping and on leash manners in general, but not much else.

Update: both the urinalysis and the urine culture came back normal and Henry hasn't had any more problems. So I think we spent a bunch of money because we jumped the gun, but at least he's fine and we learned something valuable about the one practice in a non-emergency situation. Our letter to the practice owner crossed in the mail with one from her--throughly snotty, grammatically incorrect, and she spelled DH's name wrong and rather pointedly miss addressed me, but she proudly admits to dumping a dog under the practice's active care, so I guess it will be part of our formal complaints. Leo, on the other hand, has developed a behavioral habit of peeing in his crate. Sigh, so we're back to working on that.

Thank you everyone. The vet took x-rays, did a sterile urine sample, and a physical exam. Urinalsis will be in tomorrow, urine culture I think she said 2-3 days. No signs of bladder stones, and of course he was back to peeing normally while there. While we're at it, the rest of what she saw on the xrays looked fine. She's thinking maybe just a coincidence and we got nervous because of all the problems we had lately, but for now he's okayed to keep using cranberry tablets and tramadol if needed until the results come in. I asked about the water--she used to live in our apartment complex and drank it/gave it to her dogs so she thinks it's fine but we're switching to filtered anyway. She said the fresh water is usually only an issue with people who rarely change out their dog's water, but a fountain can't hurt. (These must be people with very different dogs than mine who helpfully "change the water" by making a mess on the floor.) I have written an overly long letter to the owner of the other practice, which I will sleep on and then calm down and shorten to allow her to explain the behavior of her staff before we file reports with various agencies. I forgot to add earlier that I'm pretty sure receptionists aren't supposed to say they've checked with the vet about giving prescription medications when they haven't. The vet we saw today was quietly suprised by some of the decisions the previous vet had made, but I'm leaving it at what happened today in terms of formal complaints.

I hope so, I'm just so frustrated. My colleagues complain about the lack of restaurants, cultural activities, etc. and we're fine with all that--I'm from a small town and like a lot of things about small town life, but the lack of decent medical care for our pets is very upsetting. To everyone suggesting fountains, I'll look into ordering one today. They can't possibly make a bigger mess drinking than they already do Is the idea that they'll drink more? Or that the water will be better moving?

So, long story short, vet practice that has been iffy made another error regarding urine samples and timing and when we pointed out that inaccurate medical information was a problem (receptionist said she checked with the vet, actually checked with the other receptionist), the practice manager called back and fired us. With a sick dog. On a holiday weekend. And refused to provide a referal. When DH called back to discuss matters, she changed her story dramatically, acknowledged that I had been polite on the phone, and that if we wanted a vet that provided medically accurate information we should go somewhere else. DH asked if didn't they want to become that practice? "No." Okay then. So for the time being we're going back to the vet where we had the confusion with Henry's UTI analysis last time resulting in it not being cultured, they seem to have changed how they handle scheduling around samples to be sent to the lab. Wish us the best--I'm about ready to quit my job over the state of medical care here. There are several very good vets that I'm aware of in the state, but the closest is 1.5 hours away at best and doesn't seem feasible, particularly for sudden issues like this when we need to be able to go whenever they can squeeze us in.

We are as of last night.

Thank you for the thoughts. The boys both have water available and drink frequently (but I don't think excessively) and are leash walked 5-7x/day. They both eat Costco lamb and rice. All I could get Henry was a 3:45pm appointment (1 vet has the flu) but they've assured me a urine culture can be sent out at that time of day. Any other thoughts, suggestions, or questions I should ask the vet would be very welcome.

DH just bought them the cranberry tablets and I'll switch them over to filtered water. I thought since we drink the tap water it would be okay, but maybe it will help. We'll see what the vet says in the AM.