Spoke too soon... For the past day or so, Beau has been battling one of the common side effects of the cytoxan--a bladder infection. It started Thursday night when we noticed a drop of blood in his urine and that he was peeing "urgently" and often. His behavior was identical to when Maggie has had her urinary track infections in the past.

After speaking with the doctors at SouthPaws, they decided to run a culture to find out just what it is. So it was off to SP again yesterday afternoon. In order to get a clean sample, they had to stick a needle into his bladder. You can imagine how much fun that was. Now we have to wait 72 hours for the culture to do its thing in some petri dish in a lab somewhere. In the meantime, he's on a pretty strong antibiotic, "Simplecef".

Needless to say, he's not a happy guy today. He and I were up about every 1.5 hours last night, and then he'd pee until there was nothing to pee. It must be something akin to peeing razor blades. This ain't no "sport piddling" to cover up after the Yorkies, that's for sure.

We're hoping that the antibiotic is going to start really doing its voodoo later today. The vet says it will take 24-48 hours to really have an impact.

So, we're not straying far from the back door today. But, I have the fireplace going and when he's not peeing, he's quite comfortable cuddled up on the couch.

He's also lost a couple pounds in two weeks, so we're not holding back on giving him treats and full portions of meals when he wants them. Oh, and the crockpot is cranking again today with his next batch of the organic food I've been making them. He and Maggie both absolutely love their new diet, which is nice to see.

Keep those emails and well wishes coming, please. If any of you got a bounced message when you tried sending Beau an email (beau@vanwyk.org), I've fixed the problem. Please try again.

Cheers,

Ken