A couple of months ago we got a call from one of our clients. She was concerned about her 9 year old beagle mix named Maddie. Maddie was going outside frequently to urinate and the owner had noticed her urine had turned bloody. She was not sleeping much and seemed to be restless. Her mom knew that something wasn't right and booked an appointment for Maddie to come and see us. During a complete physical exam the doctor could feel an extremely large, hard mass in the back of the abdomen raising a suspicion that there might be stones in the bladder. There is often one to three large stones or several small pebbles called uroliths. We took an x-ray of her abdomen and were shocked to see that Maddie had one very large urolith and numerous smaller ones in her bladder that resembled a bag of gravel.
A blood screen was performed while Maddie was hospitalized on IV fluids before being anesthetized for surgery. The surgeon opened the bladder to remove the large stones and flushed the smallest granules out with a urinary catheter. After her bladder was flushed and closed, she stopped having bloody urine and went home much more comfortable!
