I Spent My Friday Night Getting Urine From A Dog

It’s important you know no dogs were harmed in this story. Well, unless you count the hideous bladder stones and the resulting surgery to remove said bladder stones. But the dog had anesthesia for that. Anyway.

So my dog Rigby had these bladder stones. My dog weighs six pounds and the eight stones that were chilling in her bladder were the size of gum balls. How effed up is that? But before we knew she had the stones, all we knew was she had something WRONG. Like, pee-on-my-mom wrong (the dog, not me. Although I’m pretty sure I probably peed on my mom at least once in my life).

Poor Rigby felt like she had to pee ALL. THE. TIME. We knows this because she suddenly TRIED to pee all the time. She couldn’t walk more than five feet without squatting. Suddenly our long-housebroken five year old dog was tinkling everywhere. After this perplexing behavior went on a few days, a light bulb went off in my head. “Hey Mike,” I said to my husband, “maybe she has a bladder infection.”

I’ve heard that bladder infections make you feel like you have to pee all the time. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never had one. Pee after sex, ladies.

Mike took little Rigby to the vet, and they were sent home with a preliminary diagnosis of a bladder infection, and instructions to get a urine sample. “How are we supposed to do that?” I asked. “I’ll take care of it,” my husband said confidently. A few minutes later Mike and Rigby went outside, Mike armed with only a syringe. I wrinkled up my nose, thinking Mike was going to use the syringe as some sort of effed up catheter and they were only going outside to protect my delicate lady feelings.

A few minutes later they returned with my dog walking surprisingly jaunty for a dog that just had a syringe in her urethra. Mike trailed behind her looking dejected. Before I could even ask what happened, he said, “So I was going to let her pee on the ground, and then use the syringe to suck it up. But as I was pulling out the syringe, the pee soaked into the ground!” When I stared at him blankly he said, “I’d like to see YOU do better!”

Never send a man to do a woman’s job.

Later that night I found myself on my street, crawling on my hands and knees behind my dog. Every time she’d squat, I’d shove a Tupperware container under her to catch her urine. It was a Friday night, and we live less than a block from a cluster of very popular college bars. And I was SEVEN MONTHS PREGNANT. I looked like I was in some natural birthing pose, if birthing a baby involved a sterilized Tupperware container, a dog with a bladder infection, and a husband screaming at college kids, “THIS IS YOU IN TEN YEARS! ENJOY YOUR RANDOM SEX!!!”

Um, I mentioned that my dog is all better now, right?