Of course, I really should say "Cystic Calculi", but does that communicate as well as "bladder stones"? These babies weigh 8 grams apiece and they're bigger than a pair of dice. Too bad they only have 5 sides each. Of course, even if you painted numbers on them, it would take a while before they lost that vague, telltale odor of urine.
That smooth tan appearance is pretty typical of struvite (magnesium-ammonium-phosphate), though we won't have our lab analysis back for a bit. As I've mentioned in a previous post, this type of stone in dogs is now considered to always be secondary to a urinary tract infection.
This particular little dog had been doing some pretty frequent squatting, lots of trips outside, and finally developing traces of blood in her urine. That's a common history. What's not so common is that it had been going on for six months. People do get busy with other things, don't they? Ah, well, it allowed these cool-looking stones to develop: so smooth, and really filling the whole bladder.
When you consider that this dog only weighs six pounds, I suppose that would be like a couple of baseballs in the average-sized person. Don't you know she's glad to get rid of those rascals? Mercy.
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