So I feel like a horrible person. I recently fostered a 8 week old husky puppy for my local animal shelter, because she needed to get over a UTI. So I got her cleared up and she still would have accidents in the house and even when she was sleeping. The vet at the shelter thought it was because she would drink too much water and that her small bladder couldn't keep up. So a friend of mine had a friend who was looking for a husky puppy. She adopted the puppy and she just informed me that the puppy has etopic ureters (the reason for the accidents) and the surgery is like $3-4K.

So I feel absolutely terrible. Foster failure, but the bad kind.

Has anyone else had to deal with etopic ureters? Was the surgery really $3-4K? Anything to look out for or to ask the vet about dealing with the surgery?

hey Sara....I did find this

http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/correcting-ectopic-ureters-juvenile-dogs

I would call around and ask different vets on the cost. I wouldn't blame myself, you didn't know. Is the pup spayed? If not that may lower the cost to do both?????

I have not dealt with it but have heard of it. Not a lot of vets will do the surgery so she may be stuck with the price she was given unless there is another in her area, probably large city, that can give a second opinion. Seems like prices vary from $2k and up depending on the area. Is that cost for the old fashioned surgery or the cost for the laser surgery? Laser maybe relatively new though. Not sure when they started that. Also something the gal needs to factor in is the potential to have this pup on meds forever. Some dogs are successful with just the surgery and others sometimes has little leaks as they get fully grown that a pill a day will take care of.

I don't see why you should feel like a failure. It's not a very common thing to happen and I wouldn't imagine would be the first or even the 4th thing for someone to consider when trying to diagnose a puppy peeing a lot. I just hope the girl who has her can afford to handle it.

MiyasMomma wrote:

hey Sara....I did find this

http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/correcting-ectopic-ureters-juvenile-dogs

I would call around and ask different vets on the cost. I wouldn't blame myself, you didn't know. Is the pup spayed? If not that may lower the cost to do both?????

She's already spayed. They spay/neuter dogs and cats before adopting them out of the shelter.

TwisterII wrote:

I have not dealt with it but have heard of it. Not a lot of vets will do the surgery so she may be stuck with the price she was given unless there is another in her area, probably large city, that can give a second opinion. Seems like prices vary from $2k and up depending on the area. Is that cost for the old fashioned surgery or the cost for the laser surgery? Laser maybe relatively new though. Not sure when they started that. Also something the gal needs to factor in is the potential to have this pup on meds forever. Some dogs are successful with just the surgery and others sometimes has little leaks as they get fully grown that a pill a day will take care of.

I don't see why you should feel like a failure. It's not a very common thing to happen and I wouldn't imagine would be the first or even the 4th thing for someone to consider when trying to diagnose a puppy peeing a lot. I just hope the girl who has her can afford to handle it.

The thought of it being that was brought up while I was fostering her, so we could have checked. But when I limited her water intake it did seem to help and she didn't pee in her sleep then. That's why the vet at the shelter thought it was something she'd grow out of. I don't know if the shelter would have payed to get the test done, so she would have had to go to a rescue for that. I know the local husky rescue had to deal with it at least once and they said the surgery was around $3,000, so I'm not sure if they would have taken on another huge vet bill like that.

Take a look at the results of this Google Search It appears as if they are teaching this operation at vet schools in Florida and vet school often are looking for animals with a specific condition.  

I do not know about the quality of any particular vet school in FL but I do know that the vet school at Texas A&M is *the* place people take their animals (small and large) for odd / complicated / expensive operations - invariably with good results.

Floridian here! The university of Florida vet program is great- located in Gainesville fl, and the staff (when I was still there) is very helpful and supportive. If they can't help for whatever reason, they'll point you to someone who can! I don't know what they'll run you price wise, but the quality of care is high.

TigerCzarina wrote:

Floridian here! The university of Florida vet program is great- located in Gainesville fl, and the staff (when I was still there) is very helpful and supportive. If they can't help for whatever reason, they'll point you to someone who can! I don't know what they'll run you price wise, but the quality of care is high.

Thanks. I did mention taking her to UF. That's where we used to have to take our llamas cause most vets do not specialize in llamas! lol. She got the quote from AVS in Maitland. I don't know of any other specialists besides UF and AVS.

There might be some good vets down in the Miami area but I know that's about a 4 hour drive, depending on where in Miami you go. I can try to get my motherinlaw to tell me where they take their dog-he's a UF graduate and if I remember correctly is pretty fair about pricing. Don't know when I'll be able to get her tho she's in South America visiting family this week...

Maya's family has set up a gofundme page for Maya's surgery. If anyone would like to donate, this is the link: Help with Maya's Surgery