Archive for year: 2012

As people are taking more and more responsibility for their health, they are naturally doing the same with their animals.

The basics are a loving home, the best diet possible, exercise and practicing preventative care.  ThePetCheckup provides an easy way for people to test their pets urine at home in between regular veterinary visits.

There are many conditions that can be detected before symptoms appear. When the test shows something abnormal, your veterinarian will follow up to diagnose the condition.   Catching a potential illness in an early stage is most beneficial for your dog or cat as well as your pocketbook!

It is generally easier to collect a urine sample from a dog than a cat.

But once cat owners get past their initial resistance in their mind, they usually can find a method that works pretty easily for them.  Cats that use the outdoors to do their business will be the most difficult of course.

ThePetCheckup manual describes several methods (for both dogs and cats).

The one I like the best and have found to be very easy is to put a plastic garbage bag on top of the litter pan.  Just lay it on top. Since cats like fresh litter, do it just after you have changed the pan or added some fresh litter. They may step on the plastic and be surprised, but they will go ahead and pee.

Just take your sample with the dropper, remove and throw away the plastic bag and you are done!  Because you are only testing every 3-4 weeks, your cats will soon forget that anything abnormal happened.  And you only need less than a teaspoon of urine (10 drops actually).

Cats are more flexible than we often give them credit for: if I am in the room when one of my cats is heading to the litter pan, I sometimes get a look from them that seems to be saying “are you going to test me now or should I just head over?”

When people find a positive test result on the “blood” parameter with ThePetCheckup it is often due to some type of infection. Any positive result on the blood parameter should be followed up.

There are many reasons for blood appearing positive on the urine test, but they are not always from serious causes. It may be as simple as something rough (perhaps a piece of a stick) that your dog ate or a very tough blade of grass that your cat chewed on.  This can irritate the digestive track, but is a temporary situation and should heal right up.  If no other symptoms are noticed, the amount of blood is minimal, you can just retest in a day or so and see if it has cleared up.