What Causes Dogs To Urinate and Drinking More Than Usual?

This can be a tricky diagnosis to make on the vets behalf as it can be any number of different conditions such as diabetes mellitus (sugar diabetes), diabetes insipidus (water diabetes), conditions affecting the kidneys or liver, adrenal gland disorders, pyometra(uterine/womb infections), and conditions causing more levels of calcium in the blood.

Theses are all possibilities but sometimes discovering if your dog actually has more frequent trips to the toilet or is drinking more than normal can be hard to monitor. As a guide, a dog should produce about 25ml - 40ml of urine per kg of your dog's weight every twenty four hours, and should consume 60ml - 80ml of water for ever kg of your dog's weight per twenty four hours. Note that this is just a guide and many dogs consume a lot of water through food or other sources.

What Your Vet May Say or Do

Before moving onto specific conditions associated with drinking more than usual or urinating more than usual, your vet will begin by trying to find if your dog is drinking more than usual because they are thirsty which causes more urination, or if your dog is needing to urinate more than usual which causes them to drink more to make up for lost fluids.

Then blood tests, physical examinations, and urine samples will be taken to gain more info on the current situation and state of your dog.

Once this has been done the next step is to look at the different possibilities further as we will do in the Associated Conditions below.



Associated Conditions

Acute (Sudden) Kidney Failure
Dog Addison's Disease / Adrenal Gland Disorder
Chronic (long term) Kidney Failure
Cushing's Disease - Adrenal Gland Disorders
Diabetes Mellitus (Sugar Diabetes)
Dog Diabetes Insipidus (Water Diabetes)
Dog Hyperparathyroidism (Overactive Parathyroid Glands)
Dog Liver Failure and Liver Disease
Dog Tumor (Causing Elevated Blood Calcium Levels)