April 10, 2019 Responsible Pet Ownership

How to Collect a Urine Sample from Your Dog or Cat

A veterinary professional leans over a concerned looking Boxer

How to Collect a Urine Sample from Your Dog or Cat

This week has been all about pee. AMC’s front desk has been busy receiving tubes, Tupperware and tinfoil full of it. It seems like all of my patients are having urinary tract issues at the same time and their owners are struggling to collect and deliver it all to AMC.

Urine collection from your pet is certainly a tricky process, and some of the pet owners were very creative in their solution to the challenge. In this blog post, I’ll share their solutions with you, since someday you might find yourself in their shoes – trying to keep your pet’s pee off of your shoes. Plus, your pet’s veterinarian will love you if you bring a urine sample to your pet’s annual visit, and don’t forget that fecal sample either!

Smokey

The owner of Smokey, a Persian, used plastic wrap. He placed the plastic wrap over the clean litter in the litter box. Smokey didn’t seem to notice, and the plastic caught the urine in its folds. Smokey’s owner then used syringes to collect the urine off the plastic and delivered the urine to me.

Nathan

Nathan is a Maltese who’s had his share of bladder problems – stones and a small tumor successfully removed by AMC surgeons. Like many small, city dogs, Nathan uses wee-wee pads for urinations. By flipping the pad upside down (blue plastic side up), so the urine would not be absorbed by the pad, the owner waited for Nathan to do his business, then folded the pad to create a spout and poured the urine into a clean container for transport.

Amelia

Amelia, the Labrador, presented a different challenge in collecting urine. Many owners of female dogs slip one of those tinfoil pie pans under their dog when they urinate. For Amelia, the noise of the pan sliding under her was startling and the pan tended to fold as it was pushed. The shape was right, but the material was not. So Amelia’s owner switched to one of those environmentally unsound, but very sturdy, plastic disposable plates with an elevated rim. Once she caught the urine, she poured it off the plate into a clean container with a screw on lid.

One final thought

Collecting urine from your pet is not just busy work for the pet owner. It provides critical medical information. The results from the urine test helped me confirm Smokey did not have kidney disease, showed Nathan’s tumor had not recurred and proved that Amelia was not drinking too much water. And that is why this week was all about pee!