My Household Zoo: I'm Excited About Pee, Pt. 2

Are you close enough with your dog to know the specific gravity of his pee? I am.

Pet Project 365 86/365

   Anyways, are you ready to talk about what's actually in pee?

    Pee can contain many things, like bacteria, cells, casts, and crystals.

    Jack's pee contains a lot of these crystals:

They're called struvite crystals, or triple phosphate crystals. They're very pretty! Their presence doesn't mean anything significant, although I am looking into why they're in Jack's urine but not in some other dogs' urine.

And the urine of a cat that I examined had a lot of these:

Bilirubin crystals! Yay! Or maybe not so yay. The kitty was very sick. Bilirubin crystals are normal in dog urine, but an abnormal finding in any other species' urine.

And, finally, after performing a urinary catheterization on a dog, we found some renal epithelial cells. I can't find a good picture, but they looked like a dozen or so little circles with black dots in the middle, and they were clumped together.

There's tons of other stuff you can find in urine. Red blood cells, white blood cells, fat globules, calcium oxalate crystals, and so on. It's really very exciting Various findings can be indicative of inflammation and/or infection, and other(most, even) findings mean absolutely nothing. The class I am currently in is more about identifying "things", later on I'll learn more about what "things" mean what.

We also test the urine on dipsticks, which measure various chemical properties of the urine. And, we use a refractometer to measure the specific gravity of the urine, or the amount of solids compared to the liquid. Distilled water has a specific gravity of 1.0. This is just in case you've ever wondered what the veterinary team is doing with your pet's pee when you give it to them. I know I never knew half of this stuff!

Midget's pee didn't contain anything interesting. On one hand, that is good: it means she's healthy. On the other hand: bummer, nothing interesting to look at.

I have yet to acquire Zora's pee. She is very private and sneaky. Wish me luck on Thursday. ;)

-Cynthia

P.S.