Blood In Urine

[Guest sydneysmom]

I came home this afternoon after a quick trip to the store to my hound having had an accident and a lot of blood in her urine all over the floor. A vet tech friend of mine seems to think she likely has a UTI, and we will be going to see the vet tomorrow (no appointment yet, but my vet is pretty awesome about getting us in ASAP when needed). She doesn't seem to be displaying any other UTI symptoms and is acting 100% normal.

 

Today we were at the park in the heat of the day, and it was in the 80s today with high humidity. She drank about a liter of water while we were at the park, and a lot of our park time was laying down in the shade under a tree. However, she was panting a lot, and while she didn't seem uncomfortable, she was clearly warm. Her gums are their normal pink color. Is there anything about the heat that could have caused this? We probably walked about 2-2.5 miles, but with lots of shady breaks and water offered.

 

I'll be presenting these concerns to my vet tomorrow of course, but does anyone have any experience with something like this? If she starts acting abnormally at all I will take her to the e-vet tonight, but there's nothing odd about her behavior (and there hasn't been anything odd recently), so just wanted to reach out and get some opinions on here.

 

Thanks!

[macoduck]

Read the section on Acute exertional rhabdomyloysis from here: http://retiredgreyhounds.info/forums/viewtopic.php?p=13605
•Dogs show distress after a race and exhibit pain when palpated over the back and hind limb muscles.
•Urine may or may not be red-tinged,but will test positive for myoglobinuria.

 

Read the section on blood from here: https://greytarticles.wordpress.com/medical-first-aid/urinary/the-renal-system-of-the-greyhound/

[4My2Greys]

You need to get her checked at the evet right away. If it is rhabdomyolysis i.v. fluid therapy needs to be started right away.

[MaryJane]

This cannot wait until tomorrow. Print out the material that was referenced and head to the evet ASAP.

[Guest sydneysmom]

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who replied tonight. I ended up taking her to the e-vet and your suspicions were correct. She got fluids and I will be following up with her bloodwork with my regular vet in 2-3 days to check on a slightly elevated kidney level (creatinine). I'm happy to have her home tonight and the vet believes she will be completely fine. Again, thank you so much everyone, I'm not sure I would have gone without your input.

[NeylasMom]

I'm so glad others saw this before me and encouraged you to take her in. I am a little concerned about her being home already though, especially with elevated creatinine. The big risk if she indeed has rhabdo is permanent kidney damage from her kidneys trying to process the myoglobin that results from broken down muscle. When Violet had her rhabdo incident she was hospitalized for 2 1/2 days and on fluids nearly the whole time. Hopefully your girl's case is milder, but she should at least be on fluids until they are sure there is no myoglobin in her urine (they can do this by spinning the urine down and seeing if it remains at all cloudy or dark) and I would want to know there were no casts in her urine and her CK levels were within a normal range as well.

 

Hope I'm just being overly cautious - rhabdo is SO scary. You'll want to be especially careful moving forward as one a dog has an incident like this they are likely to have another one. There's a really good section in The Care of The Racing Greyhound on rhabdo. You might want to order a copy. Excessive panting can change the body chemistry and lead to rhabdo. In Violet's case, I believe excessive panting in the car from stress set the stage and then the hot weather when we started our hike was the final straw. So that I don't totally scare the crap out of you, Violet's rhabdo was in Sept of 2013 and she hasn't had a repeat (knock on wood!), but I am very careful about when I let her do strenuous exercise. If the weather is at all questionable, we don't do it (I also wet her down frequently on walks when it's hot but not too hot to walk) and she is not allowed to run after any stress that's caused panting like long car rides or the vet.

 

Hope your girl makes a full recovery. Depending on severity, she may also need some pain meds - Tramadol or Gabapentin most likely - as she may have muscle pain for a few days.

[tbhounds]

Hope she will be well. Your friend-the vet tech needs to go back to school ;-)

[GeorgeofNE]

Yikes.

 

Glad she's OK. You obviously now know that's too long outside in the heat.

 

If you don't mind hours in 80 degrees and high humidity, bravo for you, but that's too dang hot for too long for a greyhound.

[NeylasMom]

How is your girl this morning?

 

Hope she will be well. Your friend-the vet tech needs to go back to school ;-)

With the bulk of the veterinary professionals maybe. Don't think many vets or vet techs think of rhabdo when a dog has urine that looks bloody. My vets office certainly said the same thing (probably a UTI) and then there was the vet who actually saw Violet and I had to basically hold a gun to his head to get him to figure out that it was rhabdo.

[Feisty49]

Yikes.

 

Glad she's OK. You obviously now know that's too long outside in the heat.

 

If you don't mind hours in 80 degrees and high humidity, bravo for you, but that's too dang hot for too long for a greyhound.

 

This. Not considering any medical condition, many/most Greyhounds are very heat sensitive. Even sitting in the shade on a hot day with high dew point/humidity can overheat them. My girl rather be walking in 30F than 60F and when it's 70 or more, we walk in the morning and evening when the sun is low and the temps are likely to be lower than at other times. On days where it's extremely hot (90+) we may not walk at all. I treat summer temperature extremes as I treat winter extremes, such as we had this past winter, the same way when deciding on when or if to walk Annie.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Feisty49

[Guest sydneysmom]

She's doing much better today, thanks for asking! We finally have yellow pee! Never thought I'd be this excited about dog pee... She's eating and drinking normally (normal for her), and while she's sore and tired, she gets up when we ask and greeted me with a wagging tail. We have a vet appointment tomorrow afternoon for the follow up blood work, but after the conversations I had with the e-vet this morning, she seems very pleased with how she's doing.

 

Last summer the heat didn't effect her badly, which is why I took her out yesterday. I'm going to be a lot more careful with her this year, especially knowing what I know now.

[NeylasMom]

Glad she's doing well. And yes, the pee. Honestly, I check Violet's pee at least once every morning and once every evening, and much more frequently on walks, especially if it's at all warm outside, she's been stressed, or she's been panting a lot from more strenuous exercise. It's in the instructions for folks who watch her too. But it's often the first obvious indication that rhabdo is going on and the dog needs to be seen ASAP so it's just become habit for me.

 

FWIW, humidity does seem to play a pretty big part in these sorts of things. In my totally unscientific opinion, low 80's and high humidity is potentially more dangerous that almost no humidity and even slightly higher temps. It does make sense from a scientific bent though - these guys can only "sweat" through their paws and via panting and if the air is already very moist, that's going to make that process that much more ineffective.

 

In the summer, when the dogs really need some good exercise, we'll go on river walks. I put on shorts and my water shoes and we find a river/stream that is wooded (and thus shady) and knee or thigh deep for me and we just walk up the river in the water and then back down. We still avoid the hottest days or hottest parts of the day to do this, but the water helps significantly with keeping them cool (plus it's just fun ).

Edited May 18, 2015 by NeylasMom

[tbhounds]

How is your girl this morning?

With the bulk of the veterinary professionals maybe. Don't think many vets or vet techs think of rhabdo when a dog has urine that looks bloody. My vets office certainly said the same thing (probably a UTI) and then there was the vet who actually saw Violet and I had to basically hold a gun to his head to get him to figure out that it was rhabdo.

Of course the first thing you think of when you see a patient present with hematuria but, without the absence of typical uti symptoms you need to dig a little deeper. Perhaps they just didn't have a chance to-idk.

[NeylasMom]

Of course the first thing you think of when you see a patient present with hematuria but, without the absence of typical uti symptoms you need to dig a little deeper. Perhaps they just didn't have a chance to-idk.

Digressing a bit, but I suspect it's the zebra vs the horse thing. Many non-ER vets I'd argue have never seen a case of rhabdo. Both a vet from my office on the phone and the freaking vet looking at Violet in the office insisted it was either probably a UTI or something like stones respectively.

 

To me the most telling symptom was the urine was normal and then suddenly it was not. One minute it was normal, a short time later it was completely dark red. And the change happened around exercise in hot weather. How you ignore that I do not know except that you expect to see the horse, not the zebra.

Edited May 18, 2015 by NeylasMom