{20dec2010: update}

We woke up Saturday to no power and pouring down rain.  Since I needed a clean pee sample for Darwin we thought we'd take her down to the garage to find a covered spot to do our collecting.  Darwin was so confused as to why we would take her to the garage to use the bathroom.  Even though she hates the rain she found the one uncovered area to walk out to do her business. I quickly slid a tupperware container under her to get our sample.  Of course I read online not to get the first drops, so I waited til she went a little then slid the container under using a rubber glove covered hand, but since she had already gone a little the container slid in pee and I didn't think about it til I touched the bottom of the container with the non gloved hand and got pee on me anyway.  hahaha.  
It took a while to figure out how to get the garage door open since the power was out (thank goodness for Facebook friends who are smarter than we are) but once we did we dropped off her sample for testing.  We had a bunch of errands to run and so Darwin came with us and we walked around the neighborhood by the vet and ran into this cute little Golden puppy tied outside one of the stores.  She REALLY wanted to play with Dar.




I don't think Darwin was quite sure what to make of this hyper leash biting puppy and though they had a small round of bitey face, she was quickly over it and we moved on. We did see another dog tied up outside another store and he was not as friendly.  As we approached him he quickly jumped up and arched his back and showed teeth. Not a friendly puppy.  We crossed the street and avoided him (I was kind of annoyed because I did want to look at the store he was in front of but was unsure of him after that).  I don't understand how people can tie their dogs up outside a public area if their dog is that angry.  It's happened before in our neighborhood when we tried to walk to the store a dog went crazy barking and snarling at Darwin as we tried to walk by.  If your dog is slightly aggressive or scared of other dogs don't leave him where he could cause harm to someone else. 
Anyway it was a good weekend and Darwin had a blast at the park yesterday, then last night she started whining/yelping again.  We were worried about it because she was more vocal than last time so I called the vet first thing in the morning and the vet tech said it could be bladder stones, but no crystals were found in her sample but it could be that they had just turned to stones already, so we made an appointment and I took her in.  The vet said her urine test from Saturday came back totally clean and with normal gravity levels and no crystals or blood so while it was possible stones could have formed it seemed unlikely.  She stretched out Darwin's back legs and checked her spine and Darwin showed signs of pain when she did that.  The vet thinks Dar just strained some muscles from running hard at the park yesterday and said to restrict her off leash play and do hot and cold compresses and massages and gave us some Tramadol to ease the pain.  It has been a few weeks since our last acupuncture appointment so we may need to book another one soon.  Let's hope this resolves the random whining and we can stop worrying about it!