Ask the French Bulldog Vet - Struvite Crystals in Frenchie Pup’s Urine
lorihuntdvm July 8th, 2008
I came across the “Ask the Frenchie Experts” while researching the following situation:
A weekend ago, our 13 week old Frenchie suddenly started having lots of small pee-ings (as opposed to going regularly or having a normal “accident”). So my wife thought he might have a bladder infection. She got a urine sample to the vet that day, who saw — I assume under a microscope because I wasn’t there — traces of blood in his urine. So the vet put the puppy on an oral antibiotic.
This last weekend, my wife took him back to the same vet, who saw the same results. So the vet sent the most recent urine sample to a lab, which returned a result of 7.5 pH and moderate crystals in the urine (as well as an elevated white cell count…). The vet wrote a prescription for Hill’s c/d, as well as to keep the puppy on antibiotics for another week.
Concerned about the growing nutritional needs of the puppy, and to get a second opinion, today I asked the puppy’s normal/local vet what to do. He looked at the faxed lab results, and suggested that we put the puppy back on normal canned food and bottled water, and to stop the antibiotics since it’s been 10 days already.
I would like to go with the second opinion because feeding a low calcium, non-puppy food like Hill’s c/d to a growing puppy seems like a bad idea. But having struvite stones form is equally bad (never mind the return of the uncontrolled small voidings).
The one thing I failed to mention is that the water at the weekend location has a lot of water softener in it because my wife’s father adds it. Thus I am hoping that could be the culprit here. (Although our 7 year old Frenchie living with him is fine)
Any advice in general would help, and maybe a tip on the most nutritious canned puppy food to get would be great.
Dr. Lori writes -
This is a puzzling situation, but I do agree with you that c/d is not an ideal diet for a growing puppy. I am reading all these results, and while I see mention of blood and white blood cells, I don’t actually see any evidence of bacteria or cultures being done?
I would suggest starting there to see if there actually IS an infection. If so, a culture would be in order. I agree with your second opinion and at this point would stop all antibiotics and go to normal food for a while. If the problem still exists in a few weeks, I would do a culture and sensitivity at that point, and take it from there.
Crystals can be somewhat normal in male dogs especially and probably have to do more with pH than anything. I would encourage him to drink lots of water, even if it means “flavoring” it to get him to drink more, adding chicken broth to water will do wonders to attract their interest, or ice cubs can be a fun toy as well as help hydrate them.
Give an update when you can and good luck with your little boy
Lori Hunt, DVM
