Poor Puppy!

Echo has had a very rough few months. For being 5 years old (35 in dog years) and already lived 1/3 of her expected life span, she has had no health problems. She has only spent time at the vet for shots and comprehensive exams.

About a month ago, I had to take her in to get her vaccines up to date. I told the doctor that she has been hurting her leg a lot when she runs around the yard. So they took x-rays of her knee and found out that her knee is slipping off. In order to avoid surgery, we were advised to put her on a prescription diet of only dry dog food in hopes that she would loose weight (she was only 2 pounds over weight). She has lost the weight and can now run around the yard with no problems.

2 weeks ago, Echo was not acting normal. She was sleeping all day and wouldn't eat or drink. After looking her over, we found sores in her ears and between the pads of all her paws. I took her into the vet and they were baffled as to what was causing this. All they could tell me was that she was VERY sick. They kept her all day and ran a ton of tests. When I went to pick her up they had decided that she had a bacterial infection so they sent us home with antibiotics.

A week after that visit, the doctor called me and said some cultures they took from Echo came back and it appears she has some kind of fungus infection. More medication for her.

During this time we had noticed that she needed to go outside to use the bathroom a lot more frequently. I figured this had something to do with the infections, but on friday night we noticed that she was peeing blood. We took her back to the vet first thing saturday morning. The doctor took an x-ray of her bladder and decided to operate right then. The x-ray showed a huge stone. They saved all the stones for us to look at. The largest one was 4"x4" and 2" thick (her bladder isn't much bigger than this). The vet said this was the biggest stone she had ever seen and she kept it for "educational purposes". We were told that if we would have waited one more day, Echo would have probably died. She had to spend the night in the hospital for observation and is in a lot of pain, but she will be fine. We hope this is the end for another 5 years.

The white mass near her hind legs is the stone.