New to here. Question on clear fluid leaking from older female dog? Had anal glands expressed.

Hi and welcome to idog.

Are you positive she isn't leaking urine?  Honestly, the smell you describe sounds like expressed anal glands.  The smell is horrific and there is often some liquid that comes with it.  I'm thinking if she expressed liquid, she may have cleaned it up by licking the covers.

I don't have any answers for you, any suggestions as to what to ask the vet, but, food for thot perhaps, and hopefully some of the others will be along soon.

I'm a bit surprised at Flagyl for this ... hmmm.  Flagyl is an antibiotic but usually used for tummy woes, not any sort of anal infection.

I'm going to guess a couple of things.

Since it was during a storm -- I have to wonder if she got startled/scared in her sleep and the anal glands leaked But *also* it could also (at the same time) caused her to lose urine.  HOWEVER, the fistula is worrisome -- I'd want to know how far that opens inward -- if infection is coming out from there that could be an entirely different thing.

UTI's in older dogs can look different.  They can literally simply wind up causing a whole systemic type malaise -- or an infection that affects other organs.  AND they can suddenly drink more -- discovering that the more they drink the less the UTI 'burns'.  Then suddenly they've drunk enough where they can't hold it and you get an 'event' like a storm and it could easily startle her enough so she leaked both anal fuid *and* urine.  And if she had drunk a LOT then the urine may be virtually odorless and colorless.

 If it were me I'd have her at the vet and I'd want a full urinalysis (and a culture & sensitivity on any infection that showed up so they know exactly WHAT drug they need to use to clear it up) and I'd probably also ask them to express the anal glands and culture that (to see if there is bacteria). 

The problem is -- they can be two completely different types of bacteria -- the urine bacteria may be anaerobic (doesn't need oxygen to live) and the anal sac infection could well be aerobic.  It's not uncommon anymore for them to use two different antibiotics for such stuff.

A culture and sensitivity isn't cheap -- usually about $90 but otherwise you can wind up with something going on several months, several vet visits, several rounds of antibiotics that don't work and you can suddenly be into this for hundreds of dollars with no resolution and a dog who is miserable.

Now if it were me I'd have them crated -- that's the magic of a crate.  If someone is sick you know *who*, and they aren't getting into stuff.  Not everyone agrees on crating, but just knowing for sure which dog to treat can be a big deal. 

You may want to put a mattress cover on or at the very least put whatever she lies on in a pillow slip and put a folded trash bag UNDER it inside the pillow slip so it absorbs what she does but it's going to be contained.

Poor gal --she probably feels miserable.

Thanks so much for the reply. We think she'd be miserable too, but she is overall acting her usual, eating normal, normal drinking, normal activity level, and being her normal lovey self. I am going to call on Monday again to get her re-evaled as obviously this course of antibiotics isn't doing what it should. She did appear to be doing better in the first few days and then not again, so I had thought it was working. Even though they just expressed her last visit, I would be interested in seeing what they would get this time too. This is our baby, we've had her all these years and I feel so bad she's got this! As far as crating, while she would do fine with it I'm sure, I can't bring myself to do it. She's had full run of our house since a few months after we got her and loves to sleep in bed. So we do have a mattress cover now and funnily enough, I had put garbage bags under my bedding this summer when I'd work a night I'd expect a storm. The only reason we thought it was our newer girl is because it's never happened before. Otherwise she gives us no indication she would do it. Anyway, like I said, thank you so much for your advice and I will talk to the vet about these tests. I'm really hoping there isn't something going on with her kidneys too!

In OUR home, crates are a safe place for our dogs.  My dogs head for their crates the minute I put shoes on, cuz they KNOW they are going to go into their crates with either a special toy or treat and they LOVE their crates.

 We recently relocated to a new state and while waiting for our house, are living in a 37 ft RV with NO slides.  3 adults and 6 german shepherds, and, oh yeah, 3 cats.  One of my boys gets terribly guardy so he spends the days in his crate back in the bedroom.  When he comes back from his morning walk he immediately goes to the bedroom and is VERY put out if his crate is not ready for him.  My female is almost as bad.....she'll wait patiently but is always ready to go to her crate after her walk.

In our last house I had scads of dog beds, a twin sized mattress and two crates in our room.  The dogs rushed to the bedroom at night to grab an available crate.

All this by way of explaining that crates aren't bad things, and many dogs really DO love their crates and look on them as their own special place.  It's us humans that have a hard time with them!

Whether or not to crate your dog is so not the point of my question in the first place. I have family members who crate their dogs, because that's the way they started. If, after having my beagle for 11 years, I started to crate her because she is having leaking issues I think she would feel put out. End of story. I have no judgements on the original responder for using crates or for you. It's just not something that I'm going to start now.

Beagle_mom, neither Glenda nor I meant that -- but it *is* an answer to your original "what to do" question, and most of us don't like to leave a thread having someone think crating is "mean" simply because the lurkers tend to walk away with the wrong impression.  No one was trying to twist your arm about it -- really not!

I think your basic problem is definitely a health issue, not a training issue and trying to cope with something like that is difficult without some sort of restraint.  You'll either have to put up baby gates or something to quarantine them to an area you can wet-proof enough to hold her until you can get the health aspects work out.  I have a feeling this is not just *one* thing -- it may be a result of some anxiety during storms, or it may simply be some form of infection.  But you'll want to confine her to enough of an area so you can keep something washable under her (that prevents leak-thru) so you can change it daily to keep bacteria from spreading and damage from occurring. 

A plywood-sheet-sized piece of wooden lattice cut into thirds (so each piece is about 2' high by about 4' wide) with a cheap piece of molding  (6 pieces as long as the lattice is wide) screwed onto the top and bottom of each piece.  Then 6 more pieces of furring about a foot long screwed into the bottom (one on each end of the three pieces - 1 screw in the middle of each to make "feet" for the sections to stand up on).

Suddenly you now have THREE baby-gates.  You can put cheap cupboard handles on the top of them and even spray paint if you want.  But they are totally portable and can go from room to room to gate off a room (without screwing up your air-flow in your home) OR you can get hook/eyes and put on each end of each piece so you can string all 3 together.  Then you can go outside with them and suddenly you have a portable 'pen' (or put it up against the side of the house for a 4-sided enclosure) if you want to travel with it.

But that will keep either/both dogs in a place where you can keep something absorbent under them if you want them to move around but still need to keep her in one spot on something washable.  I rarely use them strung together, but it's handy to know you CAN use them that way if you want to.

But leaning one up against a doorway to keep her/them in one room while you're gone may make an easy "fix" to keeping her somewhere you can minimize accidents without having to crate her.

Oh goodness, I surely wasn't wanting to twist your arm about crating.  I was simply pointing out that it's not a mean thing to do.

You might want to consider getting a crib mattress for her so that she has a bed all her own.  Since these are waterproof, the bedding you put on is easy enough to change when need be, and quite often you can find crib mattresses and bedding dirt cheap at Goodwill or places like that.  I'm actually going to pick up a few for my "kids" since they are light weight and portable "beds" for any place in the house.

I agree that this is some sort of medical condition.  Callie has offered some good suggestions for your vet.

Well I do thank both of you for your responses. I wasn't taking Glenda's response as trying to twist my arm to crate her, but as if I had said crating was a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing, I actually crate them both in the car because it's safer and keeps them from climbing onto the driver's lap and down by the pedals. I just haven't crated them in the house because up to now there has been no reason. I also agree that would be easier to tell which one was doing what. Thankfully if we keep our bedroom closed off at night when we aren't home then she goes in a bathroom if she gets scared, where we have a blanket on the floor for her. I just really want to get this fixed for her. If I have to get doggy depends I will, but if it's something we can fix then I want to fix it. I'll give you both a follow-up after I see the vet next week.

Good news, she is healing, but slowly. So we have another week and a half of a different antibiotic. No more leaking or anything at this point. So I'm hoping that clears up once we finally get her glands healed. Thanks to both of you again and thought you'd like an update.

ahh -- so was it the glands then???  At least you know!  Glad it's going better!

Glad to hear that things are looking up.

Sometimes I don't speak clearly but I didn't think you were putting down crate use either.  Must have had a muddled brain when I was typing!

It was the glands, but most likely urine also. I'm hoping the glands and the storms weakened her bladder control and that it's not going to be a frequent issue. It hasn't happened since, but we haven't had any storms since either.

 Glenda, it's really hard to read the tone of someone's post, so it can be easy to read something the wrong way. I must have read your capitalized words with the wrong inflection. No harm done.

I know that some of our members have had great success with  meds for leaking.  Which ones I can't say, but, even if this is an older age thing, it can be quite manageable.  Poor girl, there is just NO dignity in getting older.

Sometimes *I* don't know what I meant.....like I said, one of the indignities of aging.......