Dogs Leaking Pee – “Leakers” – Hormone-Responsive-Incontinence – Symptoms and Treatments
Your dog acts “pretty normal” except now and then, when she gets up, there’s a puddle of urine where she was laying down. It’s not like she held a pee-posture and urinated there. She was literally curled up resting and then when she got up there was a bladderful of pee in the cushion or bed.
My dog pee’d the bed!
These dogs are “leakers” and they have an ‘older dog’ version of incontinence. It happens in females more than male dogs. But male dogs have this problem sometimes. In male dogs, they may be walking across the floor and urine is dribbling out in drops, or even a weak dribble.
When a dog gets older their pee-tube (urethra) can get weak and especially when they’re asleep, urine can just dribble out of them!
We used to give these dogs a female hormone. It was diethyl-stilbesterol – DES and that improved the situation causing scientists at the time to call the whole “Leaker” thing: Hormone Responsive Incontinence.
Then they figured out that Phenylpropanolamine would fix it. And it does.
When we start phenylpropanolamine in dogs, I like a milligram per pound twice a day. It can take two weeks or LONGER to curb the sleep-peeing-Leaker issue. People get a little discouraged. After the peeing comes under control I typically like to run the phenylpropanolamine twice a day for a month or more and then “try once a day” and see if it maintains control.
And every six MONTHS I like to try the dogs OFF PHENYPROPANOLAMINE entirely to see if they still need it. A decent percentage of dogs stop requiring it. (Less than half, but still….)
For Leakers; FIRST we test the pee for infections, crystals, odd types of cells, and then we do a careful physical exam intends to detect “irregularities” like sometimes you can feel stones in the bladder or masses in the wall or at the base of the bladder. Sometimes we do an ultrasound to see if anything weird is going on.
If the urine and bladder are “just fine” we can try Proin (phenylpropanolamine) and see how it goes.
Side effects of Proin / phenylpropanolamine: On rare occasion people may report some agitation. I’ve never seen this “really matter” but if it’s enough to impact sleep or cause pacing at night then a lower dose can be tried or other meds for incontinence can be tried. Link to those
