Lucille’s Urinary Tract Infection

It’s tough being the subject of a blog…everyone knows private details about your life.

A few days ago we noticed that Lucille had a couple of “accidents” in the house. We never know the housebreaking status of foster dogs, but Lucille has been acting housebroken since the babies were born. Whenever you have a housebroken dog that starts to have accidents in the house the first thing you have to check for is an underlying medical problem.

We captured a urine sample and took it to the Shelter for analysis. Sure enough, Lucille has a urinary tract infection (UTI). Dr. Stone, the Shelter veterinarian, prescribed the antibiotic Sulka-Prim for a 14-day period.

When we take foster dogs from the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) we are extremely fortunate to have their laboratory and veterinary resources available to us. CCHS makes a commitment for high-quality medical care for every animal they take in. As foster parents we appreciate their dedication to having a healthy animal population. This means that our mothers and puppies go up for adoption in excellent health.

This type of care doesn’t come cheap. The urinalysis cost was $31. Lucille will need another one at the end of her treatment to be sure the infection is gone. That’s $62. Then there’s the antibiotics. It costs $27 for the medication to treat Lucille’s UCI. That brings us to $89 if one round of antibiotics takes care of the problem.

If CCHS didn’t provide these resources, either Lucille would have to go without treatment (OUCH!), or we would have to take her to a private veterinary practice at a greater expense.

By the time the puppies go up for adoption the Shelter will have invested a few hundred dollars in their medical care. I’ll be writing more about this in future posts. Each puppy will be vaccinated twice and wormed as often as necessary. If any of them get sick there will be additional medical expenses to treat them. The Shelter also pays for all their food.

We know a lot of people reading this blog take an interest in Lucille and her litter. We’d like to try raising the $89 to pay for the treatment of Lucille’s UTI. You can help by clicking the Donate button to make a donation to cover part of the expense. Thank you!