Articles with urine

Examine Your Dog’s Pee: Color Changes, Urinary Habits, and What They Mean

Examining your dog’s pee can provide a great deal of information about their physical condition and health. Your dog’s urine contains compounds produced by the body, and monitoring them can provide valuable diagnostic clues. Changes in urination and urine quality don’t only indicate problems within the urinary tract itself. They can signify a systemic disease. Urinary habits If you notice…

by Jana Rade

Veterinary Urinalysis: What Can a Veterinarian Learn from Your Dog’s Pee

In part one we discussed what important information you can get by paying attention to your dog’s pee. In the end, all you need to assess is whether your dog needs to see a vet and how soon. Your vet is much better at reading your dog’s urine—after all, they’ve got the tools! Urinalysis is the technical term for a…

by Jana Rade

Jana Rade

I am a graphic designer by day, dog health advocate, dog writer, member of the Dog Writers Association of America, and an award-winning author in my spare time. Jasmine, the Rottweiler of my life, was the largest female from her litter. We thought we were getting a healthy dog. Getting a puppy from a backyard breeder was our first mistake. Endless veterinary visits without a diagnosis or useful treatment later, I realized that I had to take Jasmine's health care into my own hands. I learned the hard way that simply seeing a vet is not always enough. There is more to finding a good vet than finding the closest clinic down the street. And, sadly, there is more to advocating for your dog's health than visiting a veterinarian. It should be enough, but it often is not. With Jasmine, it took five years to finally get a diagnosis for her initial issue. Unfortunately, other problems had snowballed for that in the meantime. Jasmine's health challenges became a crash course in understanding dog health issues and how to go about getting a proper diagnosis and treatment. I had to learn, and I had to learn fast. Helping others through my challenges and experience has become my mission and Jasmine's legacy. I now try to help people recognize and understand signs of illness in their dogs, how to work with their veterinarian, and when to seek a second opinion. My goal is to use 20 years of hard-earned experience to save others from the steep curve of having to learn things the hard way, as I did.

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