# Severe Urinary and Fecal incontinence



## blord (Feb 14, 2009)

Hi there,
I haven't been on this site in ages, but am at a loss as to what to do to help my geriatric baby. Ellie is 14.5 years old, has degenerative mylopathy and is now having accidents 3-4 times a day inside. I work from home so I am letting her out VERY frequently but the accidents are still happening. I'm talking full on puddles of urine and piles of poop. We have tried meds with no success. The vet did say she has basically no sphincter muscle control left. I'm not sure what to do. I do feel that there is somewhat of a behavioral aspect to this. We have a 13 year old son that Ellie adores, but last year had a baby (unexpectedly! Oops! ). She was fine until the baby started crawling and baby gates went up. I think this really pissed her off because we now have to open the gate for her to come into our main living area. She loves to bark at the gate to go out of the room and then turn back around and bark to come in. I must let her in and out 100 times a day. I feel horrible for disrupting her life at her age (she's my first born) and am wondering if part of this is that she's not happy. Yesterday I caught her squating down to go on a pile of clothes waiting to go downstairs to be washed. She loves to eat diapers so I do not think that doggie diapers would work. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I have a call into the vet, but she has been tested for a UTI, etc before and results were normal. Maybe it's just old age and we have to deal with it? Help!


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## MaggieRoseLee (Aug 17, 2001)

My senior dog had problems with leaving poop around the house and it was 100% because she had no control and not on purpose.

I'd think about this for the urination:


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## Baillif (Jun 26, 2013)

Bitter apple or something like that might help keep her from going after the diapers too. If you go with diapers and it works you have to make sure those things get changed quick and you clean her up regularly to avoid rashes and infections.


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## SusiQ (Jul 27, 2007)

It does sound like incontinence - the same thing happened to my mom's dog at age 15 - he literally had no control and we did end up having him PTS (he was also going blind and my mom was an invalid as well). I doubt that it's anything that your dog is doing on purpose - my understanding has always been that dogs don't think that way.


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## Magwart (Jul 8, 2012)

PROIN (prescription RX) has been very helpful with my old dog's urinary incontinence:
01 Phenylpropanolamine (Proin, Propalin) - VeterinaryPartner.com - a VIN company!


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