Caution! Wet Spots Ahead.

Yep.  You guessed it.  The incontinence is back and it's back with a vengeance.  I was getting a little nervous that there might actually be something serious wrong with her until I found some of her medicine "hidden" around the house.  Now I have to watch her eat it to be sure she isn't stashing it around the house.

Sigh.

JINX! Buy Me Some Laundry Detergent.

Yesterday, I was reading over last year's blog posts and realized that I left y'all hanging on the incontinence saga.  I chuckled to myself at the difficulties I had last year and was happy that it was all in the past.

Then this happened last night.

Soaked clear down to the sheet.  To her credit, she did ask me to go around 3:00a.m., but it took me awhile to realize what was going on and to wake up enough to get down the steps and outside.  Once we got there, she was more interested in the smells of the night than actually handling her business.  It took her 15 minutes to find an acceptable spot to pee.  Talk about frustrating!  Then three hours later, at 6:00 this morning, she was begging to go outside again.  As I was rolling out of bed for the second time of the morning, I discovered yet another wet spot.

This is the first accident we've had in awhile.  The last series of accidents occurred when a new boyfriend was spending a lot of time here.  Once he was gone, she stopped having accidents.  Not sure what's causing the problem this time, but I'm thinking I might've jinxed myself by laughing at my prior posts on this problem.  Here's to hoping this was an isolated incident.

The Saga Continues

Last Friday, I dropped off Tildy at the kennel for a weekend stay.  I updated Kay, the owner of the kennel, about Tildy's frequent accidents.  She told me that her little dog went through the same thing and it turned out to be renal failure.  Sufficiently scared out of my mind, I called the vet and got an appointment for first thing Monday morning.

When I picked up Tildy on Sunday, Kay told me that they hadn't noticed anything like the bladder emptying episodes that I had described.  Hmmm....

Sunday night, I was not awakened by a wet spot or a request to go outside.  Something in my gut told me to cancel the appointment, but I ignored that feeling and we went to the vet anyway.

Monday night, no accidents and no requests to go outside. 

The vet called with the lab results on Tuesday evening.  A series of tests and $300 later, I'm told that there is nothing wrong with her.  The vet increased her dosage of Proin and told me to keep watch on her.

Tuesday night, no accidents and no requests to go outside.

Last night, the day after receiving the news from the vet, she had an accident and didn't request to go outside.

I'm thoroughly exhausted, frustrated, and confused.

Pee pads and diapers aren't working for us.

I named this blog "The Tildy Spot" for a number of reasons.  First, I thought of it as the spot that you could find out about Tildy...kinda like "the jazz spot around the corner" or "the burger joint down the street".  I also found myself saying it a lot when I first got her, especially when we were outside.  "C'mon, Tildy.  Find your spot so we can go home."  She also has spots in the house that she's identified as hers and of course I refer to them as the Tildy spots.

Over the past few weeks, she's been leaving spots on the couch and the bed; large urine stained spots.

I tried putting training pads all over the place, but inevitably, she would either move them before she laid down or she would find the one place that wasn't covered with a pad.

Yesterday, I broke down and bought doggie diapers.

Getting her in one was somewhat of a challenge.  She didn't appreciate me putting her tail through the hole.  She didn't like the way they sounded.  She didn't like the way they constricted her movement.  Here she is after I finally got one on her.  She was not happy with me.

Once we got upstairs for the evening, I had a sense of relief.  I really thought I'd be able to sleep through the night without encountering a puddle and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't wake me up at zero dark thirty to take her outside.

Those diapers gave me a false sense of security.

Around 2:00 this morning, I caught a whiff of urine and rolled over to find a huge wet spot on my favorite quilt.  I turned my head to find Matilda pawing at me, which is her way of asking to go outside.  As I got up to get dressed, I found a dry, completely intact diaper at the foot of the bed.  She must be some sort of Houdini.

Pee pads and diapers aren't working for us.

"This is so you won't pee on me. One, two, three!"

Matilda is getting old.  The best estimates have her between 77 and 84 dog years old. (That's between 11 and 12 people years.)  In the past couple of years, we have started to battle incontinence.  It started with little dribble drops on the sofa while watching television.  Then we started have minor "oops" moments while settling in for the evening.  That's when the vet prescribed Proin drops to help her with bladder control.  At first it was a struggle getting her to take the drops.  Eventually we got into a good habit of taking the drops after going for a walk.  But the only way she would open her mouth for the drops is if I sing-songingly said, "This is so you won't pee on me.  One, two, three!"

Every now and again, I would go stretches without giving her the medicine and she would do well without it.  But then the dribbles would start again, so we would start back up with, "This is so you won't pee on me.  One, two, three!".

When the pharmaceutical company stopped manufacturing the drops we had a slight problem.  Matilda refused to take the tablets for quite awhile.  Once I figured out that she would eat anything that was covered in peanut butter, we were back on track.

We recently went through a very long successful stretch without the medicine, but incontinence came back with a vengeance.  This time, there were no dribbles or "oops".  This time, she emptied her bladder three times in one night, while she was sleeping...on my bed.  What's worse is that right before going to bed that night, I had decided to change my sheets.  After the third accident, I was praying that there would be no more because I had no more clean sheets.  During that same night, she woke me up three separate times and asked to go outside.  Two of the three times, she squatted for almost a minute.  The third time, we smelled the presence of a skunk, so she decided that she wouldn't handle her business at that time...which was 4:30 a.m.  But at 5:50 a.m., five minutes before my alarm clock sounded, I rolled over to find a guilty face staring back at me.  Yes, another wet spot in the bed.

We're back to medicinal peanut butter treats, but we're still having small incidents.

Matilda is getting old.  Sigh...