Leelee is an 11-year-old, spayed labrador retriever who presented for urinary issues. Initially, we saw her in October for a UTI that we treated with antibiotics, and the signs resolved. 9 months later, she had similar signs with accidents in the house, small, frequent urinations outside, and blood-tinged urine. We examined the urine and found a lot of red and white blood cells as well as a high pH; this is all consistent with a urinary tract infection. We treated her with antibiotics, but this time her signs did not resolve. We did blood work to ensure there was no infection in her kidneys, then we sedated her to perform x-rays. As you can see in the photograph, there are a lot of stones in that bladder!
We were able to get Leelee into surgery. It was challenging to remove all the small stones and we had to insert a urinary catheter through her bladder during the procedure and flush a few stones out her urethra to get them all. She recovered well from surgery.
The stones were sent out for analysis and we found they were mostly struvite stones. These occur when the pH of the urine is high for a long time as happens during a UTI. We put her on a special diet called C/D to prevent stone formation for a time and if she gets stones again, we will hopefully be able to dissolve them.