Dogs like walking very much, which is also an important time for them to exercise and excrete. This is also an excellent time for you to observe the dog's health.
When there are health problems, dogs will become lazy to walk or have no spirit. In addition, the defecation during walking is also of great significance to understand its health status. Pay attention to the dog's abnormality during walking.
Observe the movements of the front and rear legs: Is the gait faltering?
Observe expressions and movements: Do you look listless?
Observe defecation: the color and quantity of urine, the color and shape of stool.
Observe whether the urine color is abnormal.
Red urine, turbid urine, bright urine, thick or light urine, closed urine and orange urine may all be health problems.
Urine collection method: catch the dog's urine with a paper cup, which is suitable for dogs with small urine volume. For large dogs, if there is no paper cup, you can put a shallow basin where the dog urinates.
Preservation: put the received urine into a clean bottle with a lid, such as a mineral water bottle. If you can't send it to the pet hospital immediately, you can put the urine bottle in the refrigerator to avoid bacterial reproduction.
Urine red: blood in urine.
Healthy urine is light yellow. When urine is red or brown, it means blood in urine. When there is a small amount of blood in the urine, the color of the urine is darker than usual, when there is a large amount of blood in the urine, the urine turns dark brown, and when there is more blood in the urine, the urine turns burgundy. When hematuria occurs, bacterial inflammation such as cystitis can be considered. When suffering from kidney, ureter and urethra stones, stones can hurt organs and hematuria can also occur. In addition, filariasis and onion poisoning can also cause hematuria.
Urine turbidity: urinary tract inflammation.
First of all, it should be considered that there is inflammation in the urinary tract from the kidney to the urethral segment, and pus caused by inflammation is mixed into the urine, which makes the urine turbid, and cystitis is the most common. Generally speaking, bacteria will go upstream after urinary tract infection, and the bladder with urine accumulation is the most suitable place for bacteria to multiply. Abnormal reproductive organs can also make urine turbid. Prostate hypertrophy near the bladder outlet is also prone to infection. When suffering from metritis, cheese-colored or brown urine may appear.
Glowing urine: urine mixed with crystals.
After urinating, sometimes you can see something shiny where the urine has penetrated. When the urine is dry, it can be seen more clearly, indicating that the dog may have cystitis. When suffering from cystitis, phosphate in urine is easy to form crystals in the bladder, and the crystals are discharged with urine and glow.
If left untreated for a long time, the crystals will gradually become larger, which may lead to urinary calculi, so it is necessary to treat them as soon as possible.
Thickening or thinning of urine: insufficient or excessive water
When urinating for the first time in the morning or after exercise, and when the water is insufficient, the urine is concentrated and dark yellow. On the contrary, if you drink too much water, the color of urine will become lighter.
But when the urine color becomes darker and lighter, you should pay attention. When suffering from diseases with symptoms such as dysentery and vomiting, the color of urine can be deepened due to insufficient water. When suffering from diabetes and diabetes insipidus, drinking plenty of water can lighten the color of urine.
Urodynia: caused by urethral obstruction.
When you urinate, you can only excrete a little urine or drip a little urine. Attention should be paid to this kind of urine volume when it is very small, which may be caused by cystitis or urethral obstruction caused by prostate disease. When suffering from urinary calculi, severe pain can cause dysuria. If you can't excrete any urine, it may be renal insufficiency, and you should seek veterinary treatment immediately.
The urine is orange: jaundice appears.
The urine is very dark. When it is close to orange, it may be caused by jaundice caused by liver disease, liver injury caused by drugs, gallbladder disease and gallstones.
Jaundice is caused by bilirubin, the main component of bile, entering the blood. Bilirubin enters the urine through the kidney. When jaundice occurs, eyes and skin will turn yellow.
Observe the color and shape of stool.
Soft stools, bloody stools and constipation may all be health problems.
Loose stool: Probably suffering from digestive system diseases.
Food is usually absorbed by the stomach and small intestine, then enters the large intestine, and the water is fully absorbed to form visible feces, which are then excreted. When the gastrointestinal function is disordered, the water in food cannot be fully absorbed, thus forming soft stools. Dogs often suffer from dysentery for some unremarkable reasons, such as overeating, eating unheated food or feeling nervous, and their feces will become soft. When dysentery occurs, if the above reasons do not exist, it is more often caused by digestive system diseases. As shown in the figure below, the shape of stool discharged when suffering from dysentery is also different. When you excrete watery stool, it means that you may have a serious infectious disease and should seek veterinary treatment as soon as possible.
There are several types of loose stools:
Soft stool: although it has a shape, it can't be lifted.
Muddy stool: Although it is not like watery stool, it looks like mud.
Watery stool: The stool contains a lot of water and is liquid, suggesting that dysentery is serious.
Bloody stool: caused by gastrointestinal bleeding.
When there is blood in the stool, it is likely to be bleeding somewhere in the digestive system. _ The blood in the stool is not all red, but it can be oxidized to black over time. Therefore, according to the color of blood in feces, the bleeding site can be roughly inferred. If the blood in the stool is bright red, it means bleeding in the lower part of the large intestine. There are many diseases in the lower part of the large intestine. When mucus and blood are attached to the stool surface, protozoan parasitosis can be suspected, and when blood is attached to the water sample, virus infection can be suspected. When the stomach, small intestine and other upper digestive tract bleed, it takes some time to be excreted, so the blood is black. Especially when there is a lot of bleeding in the upper digestive tract, _ will mix with blood and discharge tar-like stool, which is black and bright.
When the color of feces is black, you should also pay attention. Feces are a healthy sunny dining table, so we should always pay attention to them.
There are several types of blood in feces:
Bloody stool: The blood in bloody stool is not all red, but sometimes it is black.
Tarky stool: black and shiny stool, mainly caused by massive gastrointestinal bleeding.
Mucous stool: refers to feces with mucus on the surface, which is mainly caused by diseases in the lower part of the large intestine.
Constipation: Check your diet.
Dogs have less constipation and may eat less food when they can't defecate, resulting in less feces. Therefore, it depends on whether you have eaten all the food you have fed. If you have loss of appetite, you should also find out the reason. In the case of normal diet but no stool, the first thing to consider is that there is something wrong with the food you feed. Foods containing too much calcium will harden feces. In addition, when there is pain in the anus due to anal diseases, there will also be no defecation. When suffering from prostate disease, the enlarged prostate compresses the rectum, which can also lead to difficulty in defecation. In addition, the tangled body hair blocks the anus and causes dysrhythmia of defecation. , may lead to constipation.
Normal feces
Color: The feces are brown, neither soft nor hard. You can also have different colors because you eat different foods, but when you eat the same food and the color of your stool is different from the past, you should pay attention.
Hardness: The hardness of toilet paper is better for people who can hold it. The stool with ideal hardness will not leave any trace on the ground after defecation.
Defecation frequency: In principle, defecation frequency should be the same as feeding frequency, and attention should be paid when it is more or less than feeding frequency.
Taste: It is normal for feces to smell, but the smell of feces will change subtly when you are sick. To this end, in addition to color and shape, but also pay attention to the smell of feces.
Treatment of abnormal feces: When the feces are found abnormal, the feces will not form when the dog has diarrhea in the hospital. When the water-like feces are discharged, the feces on the ground can be scraped up and put into a container, or wrapped in aluminum foil and sent to the hospital.
Observe whether the gait is abnormal
Staggering gait, dragging feet, abnormal legs and lazy walking may all be health conditions.
Stumbling: It may be nerve paralysis.
The cause of nerve paralysis may be abnormal lumbar vertebrae. Lumbar deformation and disc herniation in aged dogs can compress nerves, leading to gait staggering. In addition, brain diseases can also lead to nerve paralysis. Paralysis caused by any cause must be diagnosed and treated as soon as possible.
Walking with dragging feet: it may be abnormal heels.
When walking, one side retreats and mops the floor. It may be that the shoulder joint or bone joint is abnormal, which leads to heel obstacle and insufficient leg strength, thus dragging the leg to walk. In addition, it is also possible that the accident caused the fracture. If both legs can't be lifted, walking with only the front legs may flash, and brain and spinal cord disorders may also cause paralysis of both legs.
Observe when going up and down the stairs.
In general, dogs are free to go up and down stairs. When the dog is too lazy to go up and down the stairs or uncomfortable to go up and down the stairs, pay attention to observe whether there is anything abnormal.
Abnormal leg: bent leg
Congenital femoral joint abnormality and femoral joint hypoplasia can lead to leg bending. When rickets occurs, the skeleton is underdeveloped, and the legs can't bear the weight gain in the process of growth and development, and gradually form a bend, which shows that the front legs are "O" shaped and the rear legs are "X" shaped. The main cause of rickets is unbalanced nutrition in food, so we should feed the dog with balanced nutrition. Puppies have rickets and femoral joint dysplasia, and adult hind legs bend due to nutritional imbalance leading to osteoporosis.