Stryker seems to be urinating quite frequently. He's just at that 12 week mark and it seems like this little guy has the urge to go out and urinate quite frequently. He drinks a lot of water as well. It seems like every 10 minutes he's wanting to go out and every time he does, he urinates. I have a vet appointment for him on the 30th to get his next set of shots. I tried to get one sooner but they are so packed right now. She said if I get to worried I could always bring him in under an Emergency but the cost for the exam and work up would be double the price. His urine is clear from what I can tell so I'm not sure if this is common for a puppy of his age to urinate so much and it's not super large amount when he does go out unless he's been holding it for an hour or so. I don't know what to do. He doesn't seem like he's in pain and he's very active/playful. He doesn't whine or yelp when he goes potty. Since we're working on house breaking him completely he does get very excited every time he goes because he gets a "Good boy, pee pee is for outside" followed by lots of praises and a treat. So I'm wondering if he's just doing that to get the goods or if he has some type of medical issue going on?
My only experience of urinary infections is in cats, but can't you just take Stryker to a different vet? We have vets coming out the eyeballs in Wellington, so if I couldn't take Xena to my usual clinic I know I could take her elsewhere and it wouldn't cost more.
Axel was notorious for drinking way too much water. Then peeing out crystal clear "lakes" as the day care lady said lol. So we started limiting his water after speaking to his breeder. He said its normal for puppies to drink way more than they need. That fixed his constant needing to urinate. We stopped having to limit his water around 5 months old. We never left his water dish empty but we stopped filling it up completely. We would only fill it half way.
The only time he doesn't have access to water is when he's in his pen. The only time he's in his pen is during sleep time or 2 other times when he was put on timeout. I guess I can limit his fluid intake until he gets seen by his vet. The reason I don't take him to any other clinic is something that happened when I still had my Dozer. The clinic I tried was only in it for the money and provided very little support to Dozer when he was clearly in pain. From the moment we walked in to the current vet they treated Dozer with the same love and compassion I gave him. At that time anybody could clearly see he was in pain and offer something for the pain and even brought out a padded table with wheels so he wouldn't have to walk causing more pain. Also after fighting so hard to help him resolve his issue for over a year the time came to say goodbye but then they did something that most clinics would never do and that was by making a donation in Dozers name to help find suitable cures for animals with cronic pain.
This isn't unusual - some pups are real widdlers for quite a while! 12 weeks is very young, they aren't usually holding it for long in the day until about 20 weeks. I did find that Kara didn't fully empty her bladder on anticipation of a treat, then needed to go half an hour later. With the next pup I'm not going to use treats for toilet training.
Don't limit fluid intake! If it is a UTI the vet will give medication and suggest lots of water. If it is a UTI it needs flushing through, less fluid will really make things worse. Always have water down for dogs and pups. ...
It is not professional to charge you a double fee for an emergency consultation unless it is 'out of hours'. My vet would fit me in today if I had a sick dog, at no extra charge!
Excitement, play and activity will prompt the urge to pee more. I was out every 10 minutes sometimes if we had some fun going on, at that age.
Drinking excessively and weeing excessively (and sudden, unexplained weight loss) are often associated with diabetes. Not trying to worry you, but if you are concerned, then you should see a vet as soon as you can. The other thing: have you changed his food? You might be feeding a pellet with high salt, causing your pup to be thirsty. We feed Snowie raw food. We changed to pellets (to see if a restricted food in a pellet form would help his allergies), but he was drinking non-stop, through the night, he was so thirsty from the salt and the dryness of the pellets, so we went back to raw food after a couple of days and the excessive drinking stopped. There could be various other reasons for excessive thirst and weeing, some of which are of no concern at all, such as a young pup just needs to wee more than an adult -- I am sometimes astounded how long our adult boy can keep it in! He saves it up for his walks to mark all the lampposts!
Let me rephrase a few things because in my haste of concern I kind of worded a few things. By restricting his fluid intake what I meant was Kelsey suggested and that was not filling his bowl completely up. Right now he has a rather large bowl for his size. It's what I had from Dozer so what I meant was reducing the size of his bowl. Another thing that I worded wrong was the vet not being able to see Stryker promptly. I can at any time take Stryker in under Emergency care. They are open 24 hours a day 7 days week as they should because it is a Animal Hospital. Unless it's a real Emergency they would make me wait if I brought him in any it wasn't an Emergency. (Attacked, bleeding, physically in pain, etc) I have recently switched his dog food. It's not like human food where they list the sodium so I'll have to research it a bit more. He has become more active and is chewing more on sticks and twigs.
Also if you are worried about a UTI, you can see if your vet would be fine with you dropping off a urine sample ? Mine let me do that with no vet visit. Just dropped it off and they sent it out for testing. That wasn't for Axel but for my other pup. Axel also had a huge bowl for his size, hence like you said, adjusting the bowl size or water amount in a large bowl
