I'll cover the accidents up top and down on the bottom I'll pose my question about the diapers so if you only want to read or tell me about canine diapering just skip to the bottom. For just my questions about the bladder issue just skip to the bottom of the first part.
Ok so Stormy has been having accidents, while she's awake and while she's snoozing. She's had five or six that we know about and probably has had more when she's been outside in the yard that we just didn't see happening.
Stormy is ten or so, I always have to dig up her adoption papers to be certain, but she's in the 10-12 range, She's been my constant companion for so long I never really give any thought to her age.
When these accidents occur while she's awake it's like she just lets loose, no squatting or anything she's just doing her own thing and it just gushes out.
The first time I saw it happen we were at Petsmart shopping for SS, I'd asked her to lay down so I could look at something, she parked herself right where I'd asked and lay there wagging her tail and waiting, I turned to ask her to move a little closer to me so I could have a little more slack on the lead and she had a terribly uncomfortable look on her face then it just came out.
I wrote it off to her just needing to pee and being too polite to ask to go out, or the fact that we were in nasal disney land and she was excited, I figured those things in combination with a full bladder might have led to the accident and I didn't think much more of it.
Then a few nights later I was reading my book in bed while Chino and Stormy were wrestling gently at the foot of the bed. Stormy had had enough and came up to my end to snuggle up under my arm where she likes to be when I read, she sighed real heavy and relaxed then it all just came flowing forth, she looked miserable after but gave no indication of any discomfort before it happened.
Last night she was in bed snuggling with the cat, both were nearly dead to the world when I went past the bedroom door on my way to the bathroom, when I came out I stopped in the doorway to muse over the mass of seemingly endless black fur piled up in the middle of my bed and as I watched she just let loose mid snore. She woke up and went and hid right after it happened, but she was right in the middle of a snore when the accident occurred.
She had an accident in the crate this afternoon, Grannie and I had gone off to get lunch and check out the little bead store down town, we were probably only gone two or three hours, and when I came home Stormy had had an accident in the crate, bad enough that I had to bathe her right then to get the mass amount of pee out of her coat in spite of the absorbent pad I'd laid down in the bottom of the crate, this was a huge accident not just a piddle that got sat in.
I'm worried about my girl! We're off to the vet as soon as my check clears one way or the other but right now I'm just worried stupid.
Stormy has always been one of those dogs who would much rather die than pee in the house. I kid you not you could probably leave her in a crate for a full 48 hours with a twenty gallon water bucket before she had an accident, mind you I have NEVER done this and wouldn't in a million years, but I believe that because she is so clean and so horrified by any of the other dogs having an accident inside that she would wait until she burst if it meant having an accident herself. She gives the cats disgusted looks when they come out of the litter box, like "How can you do that indoors!?!?"
She'll actually run and pee in the bath tub if she's been inside and can't hold it any longer and can't get someone to let her out, so I'm reasonably certain this is not a training issue of any kind.
I hate to put a diaper on her but right now it's the best I can do until her appointment with the needle and cookie guy comes around.
I've kind of wondered about something that happened to her about five years ago, She'd been drinking out of the toilet, I've never had an issue with the dogs grabbing a quick drink from the toilet and I keep it sparkling so I can still feel ok about kissing my dogs
as long as it's been a good half hour between the toilet and my face. At any rate my ex had caught her drinking out of the toilet which for some reason infuriated him, he kicked stormy hard right between the back legs, hard enough to bring her rear off the ground. Needless to say he received the exact same treatment after I got Stormy put in another room but that's an entirely different story. I watched her closely after for a long while and she never seemed to be bothered at all, she was kind of tender sitting the rest of that day but the next day didn't appear to have any issue at all.
Could that potentially be coming back to bite her in the rump now?
Is urinary incontinence common as dogs get older?
My grandmother mentioned that they make pills and do surgeries to try and correct the problem in people, do they do the same for dogs?
Any input is as always greatly appreciated.
.............................About the diapers...............................
Thankfully Grandma is a worse packrat than I am and still had several bags of adult diapers and a bag of big flat pads much like giant puppy pads left from Grandpa. Stormy currently has a pad in the crate when she's in there and a diaper on when she's out and about in the house or riding in the car. (She goes with me in the car at least once a day)
Stormy hated the diaper the first time but she seems to accept the idea of wearing it if I don't give her an option. It's only been a few days since we started with the diapers but I just can't seem to get the blasted things to stay on her for very long. She doesn't try to get them off, she hasn't gnawed on them or scooted her butt on the floor trying to remove them but they just seem to kinda fall off after a while. I've got both small and medium adult diapers and I don't seem to have any better luck with either size.
I've tried tape, I've tried making them as snug as I can get away with, snug with and without tape, loose with tape around her middle, and I've tried tape "suspenders" which seems to just be a complete waste of tape.
Is there a special way to cut a slot for the tail and keep the diapers up on dogs? I think part of the trouble is the shape, they don't have the right kind of hips to keep them pulled up.
