4 year old yorkie drinking a lot in the evenings
 

Hi friends. Apologies if this sounds slightly unhinged, but I’ve been noticing my 4 year old girl drinking a more frequently lately. The weird thing is she doesn’t seem to be drinking more in terms of quantity, just in terms of frequency.

She doesn’t drink a lot during the day (usually napping), but between 4-6 pm when everyone gets home and we’re making dinner, I find that she’s constantly going over to her bowl for short sips. I’ve measured her water intake and she seems to drink around half a cup a day, which vet tells me is very normal for her size (4 lbs).

To be on the safe side, I got her checked out. Vet did a blood panel, bladder ultrasound, and a urinalysis. Her USG (urine specific gravity) was low when I first took her in (it was at night and she had drunk a lot of water that evening). When I did a morning sample the next day, her USG was normal. Vet said this was good as it means she can properly concentrate her urine. Also had her urine protein level tested and it came back as 0.2. Vet says technically this is “borderline” proteinuric and we could test it again in a couple months. Apparently below 0.2 is normal, 0.2-0.5 is borderline, and above 0.5 is proteinuric. No evidence of glucose suggesting diabetes or bacteria suggesting UTI. Nothing in bloodwork that points to Cushing or Addisons either.

Little girl is happy, energetic, and playful. Normal digestion and normal appetite.

So … at this point, should I be concerned that there’s some kind of very early kidney disease happening here? She’s only 4 years old. Or, am I just making too much of this? I have a tendency to worry excessively about my dogs. I have generalized anxiety and the health of my pets is one of my biggest triggers.

Perhaps this is just a behavioural thing and she’s drinking so much at night because she’s excited to have the family home and hasn’t been drinking much during the day.

Thoughts?

You might just be overreacting. You said, she’s energetic and playful I’d be concerned if she wasn’t

I would take her back to the vet for kidney testing just to ease yyour mind.

Always better to be safe than sorry.