so, Elvis has cystinuria

One morning during a walk Elvis just stopped peeing. He was trying to, he just stood there with his leg up, for a long time, almost like he was pee constipated. When we got home he actually layed down on the kitchen floor and started to cry. Elvis never ever lays on the floor, why lay on the floor when you can lay on the couch? And he was crying and crying, it was so heartbreaking. We rushed him to the Emergency Hospital since it was Sunday morning and our vet was closed. We met a really nice vet and it turns out she also has a smoothy brussels griffon! His bladder was extended and his urinary tract was blocked so she took x-rays and ultra sounds and sent of a urine sample to the lab to be tested for crystals, she also relieved his bladder with a catheter. She took great care of him and sent him home with us only if we promised to take him right to our normal vet in the morning, which we did of course. He peed a tiny bit that night, but in the morning he couldn't again. And off to the vet we went.

Our wonderful vet did tons of tests and x-rays and found stones that needed to be removed surgicaly since they could not flush them out or even move them. The surgery went well, they found 7 stones and sent them off to the lab to be tested. The vet told us this was a life threating situation because if the dog cannot pee, then it can infect his kidney and poison him, or his bladder would burst. Poor puppy. The surgery was a few hours! What a great vet we have, once again she saved our dogs life.

The lab results came back from both the emergency vet as well as our regular vet. Elvis had cystine stones and crystals in his urine. Now he is on a very very strict diet only science diet U/D and science diet bones, NO TREATS! ouch. I wanted to find out as much as I could about cystine stones and kept coming across the name Dr. Urs Giger at the University of Penn. So I contacted him by e-mail to find out more about cystine stones and he asked if we could make an appointment to see him. They took more samples and ultra sounds and x-rays. We thought after the surgery and being on a strict diet that we were ok and in the clear. That was the middle of December, now it is the end of February and we find out that Elvis has another stone and tiny stones forming in his bladder. (insert scream here).

Our vet, thankfully, wants to try to everything she can first before doing anything extreme. She has us giving Elvis baking soda in his food, this is hopefully going to break down the stones and change the ph in his urine.
It's only been a few days with the baking soda, I hope to heaven it is working.

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