Izzy was suddenly drinking a lot more water than usual. Needless to say, he was also peeing more than usual, too. Normally, this is an indication of a possible health problem.
We wanted to check it out. When we went to South Dakota to register our vehicles, we used a vet there in Rapid City. Since we would be moving around some, we asked them if they could help us with Izzy long distance. They were very amiable to the idea.
So, we thought this was a good opportunity to try out the long distance consultation. Through our pet’s profile on their web site, we emailed Izzy’s symptoms to them. We also mentioned that we had some urinalysis strips for testing his pee, if that would be helpful.
When Dr. Marrotte called, we discussed some possibilities and we decided that the urine test would be a good start. She asked us to get a sample of Izzy’s urine and follow the directions on the test strips container to get the numbers and email them to her. When Natalie asked her how to collect the urine, she said to get a pan and go for it, and then suggested videoing it and then chuckled.
Within minutes of the call, Izzy decided to give us the opportunity to do the collection for he was scratching on the door to go out. We searched to find some sort of container for the collection. A cup was out of the question, so we got a plastic throw away “Take Along” storage container. Natalie was selected by me to be the one to take the sample while I tried to video the operation.
Izzy must have needed to go pretty badly because he popped out of the 5th Wheel and in a very short distance found a railroad tie and lifted his leg. Neither of us expected this… most of the time he has to check out several spots before he finds the perfect one for christening. Both Natalie and I scrambled to accomplish our assigned duties. I think Natalie completed her task much better than I did. We got a lot of beagle urine to take as many test as we needed to in order to note the results. My video wasn’t as good as I hoped for but we did get something. I wanted to give it another try at a later date but Natalie didn’t want work for perfection.
Video Link: