To Jennifer Morlanne:
 
> I have a 2.5 year old MF male ferret.  He's been passing EXTREMELY dark
>urine that is the color of coke and very cloudy.  Well, I took him and a
>urine sample to the vet.  She says that there are red and white blood
>cells, so it looks like an infection.  She put him on Clavamox for 1 week
>and NO change.  We took another sample of urine and found the same with
>bacteria.  We changed antibiotics to Tribrissen... and still no change.
>She says the next step is to inject some dye and do some x-rays to see if
>there are tumors or something going on inside...
 
     Well, actually the next step would be to culture the urine and find
out what antibiotics the bacteria is susceptible.  What the vet has been
doing is just trying drugs at random.  You can go through a lot of drugs
this way and not touch the bacteria - all the time the infection is getting
worse.  One thing I have learned with ferrets is that bladder infections can
quickly progress to kidney infections, which is a lot more serious.
 
Before you go looking for tumors, culture that urine!!!
 
Bruce Williams, DVM, DACVP
Dept. of Vet Path, AFIP
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Chief Pathologist, AccuPath
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[Posted in FML issue 1300]