Jada is now 9 years old. She's a Doberman and was spayed when we got her from the rescue. I know nothing about who spayed her or how young she was at the time. Female spayed dobies often have some urinary incontinence. Of the 5 we've had, 2 have had incontinence. The typical treatment now is to give phenylpropanolamine. This used to be sold as Dexatrim in the US and was used for appetite suppression in people. But it was taken off the market for that. Now it's sold for dogs as Proin.
Jada has always dribbled a bit so she was put on Proin when we got her at about 1 1/2 years of age. The drug works by improving the tone of the urinary sphincter muscle which tends to relax after spay in some dogs. A low dose worked well until this last spring. Then she began dribbling again. Usually she would wake up in a wet bed (not ours, thank goodness). Checks for UTI were negative so we upped the dose of Proin. That helped for a while. In Sept. when she went in for her checkup, the dose wasn't working well and we had to get up during the night to take her out. That gets old very fast!!! The vet suggested we switch to Incurin, which is estriol, a human estrogen which was supposed to work well in dogs. It didn't work for Jada. Over the past 2 months we've been fiddling with the dose, combining it with Proin and still she did not have full control. Now for Jada this is traumatic as she is terribly fussy about cleanliness and gets very upset if she sees a wet spot on her bed or carpet.
So, Monday it was back to the vet for another workup. No UTI, so that was good. But the relatively high dose of estriol had other effects and it looked like she was going into "heat". So, that wasn't working and her Proin dose was as high as we used before we started the estriol. It turns out that the estriol (Incurin) is rather new for use in dogs. As I read the package insert it seemed that it didn't have a really good success rate in totally curing the incontinence. And the vet concurred that it was a problem in larger dogs and they had at least 3 now that didn't improve on it. I was really worried about Jada since it seemed that the only solution might be some surgery and that doesn't always totally cure the problem either. But the vet suggested we try DES, diethylstilbestriol. This is a synthetic estrogen that has been banned from use in humans. It results in vaginal cancers in the women who were exposed in utero. But it's use in dogs is okay, especially since this is a problem mainly in spayed dogs. My understanding was that it was in the process of being taken off the market for dogs as well, but apparently that isn't the case. She suggested we go cold turkey with the other drugs and start her on DES. I was skeptical because that was the advice given for the estriol (Incurin) and she was miserable with absolutely no control at all. But it WORKS!!! She's much more comfortable off the high dose of Proin and has had complete control! Now it's only 2 days, but it's the first time she hasn't had problems for months. She seems so nice and comfortable and confident that it's a different dog! I hope it continues and we can work down on dose. Many dogs get a dose only twice a week. And my wallet will LOVE that too. And I'll have so much less laundry to do as well. And we can have sweet dreams throughout the night.
Linda
Jada has always dribbled a bit so she was put on Proin when we got her at about 1 1/2 years of age. The drug works by improving the tone of the urinary sphincter muscle which tends to relax after spay in some dogs. A low dose worked well until this last spring. Then she began dribbling again. Usually she would wake up in a wet bed (not ours, thank goodness). Checks for UTI were negative so we upped the dose of Proin. That helped for a while. In Sept. when she went in for her checkup, the dose wasn't working well and we had to get up during the night to take her out. That gets old very fast!!! The vet suggested we switch to Incurin, which is estriol, a human estrogen which was supposed to work well in dogs. It didn't work for Jada. Over the past 2 months we've been fiddling with the dose, combining it with Proin and still she did not have full control. Now for Jada this is traumatic as she is terribly fussy about cleanliness and gets very upset if she sees a wet spot on her bed or carpet.
So, Monday it was back to the vet for another workup. No UTI, so that was good. But the relatively high dose of estriol had other effects and it looked like she was going into "heat". So, that wasn't working and her Proin dose was as high as we used before we started the estriol. It turns out that the estriol (Incurin) is rather new for use in dogs. As I read the package insert it seemed that it didn't have a really good success rate in totally curing the incontinence. And the vet concurred that it was a problem in larger dogs and they had at least 3 now that didn't improve on it. I was really worried about Jada since it seemed that the only solution might be some surgery and that doesn't always totally cure the problem either. But the vet suggested we try DES, diethylstilbestriol. This is a synthetic estrogen that has been banned from use in humans. It results in vaginal cancers in the women who were exposed in utero. But it's use in dogs is okay, especially since this is a problem mainly in spayed dogs. My understanding was that it was in the process of being taken off the market for dogs as well, but apparently that isn't the case. She suggested we go cold turkey with the other drugs and start her on DES. I was skeptical because that was the advice given for the estriol (Incurin) and she was miserable with absolutely no control at all. But it WORKS!!! She's much more comfortable off the high dose of Proin and has had complete control! Now it's only 2 days, but it's the first time she hasn't had problems for months. She seems so nice and comfortable and confident that it's a different dog! I hope it continues and we can work down on dose. Many dogs get a dose only twice a week. And my wallet will LOVE that too. And I'll have so much less laundry to do as well. And we can have sweet dreams throughout the night.
Linda
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