leaking urine

Question
We have a 2 year old female doberman who from time to time leaks urine w/o knowing. She is spayed.
What causes this and what can be done to stop this? she is very healthy, weighs about 80 lbs., and is very active and playful.

Answer
This is a very common hormone (or lack of) related problem. Very common in spayed females and the occasional male gets it.

Being neutered means no hormones which in turn can cause a slacking of the bladder sphincter muscle, which then causes incontinence.

In dogs this happens most often while they are asleep and in humans when they sneeze!
 
Most vets use a drug called phenylpropanolamine to help with this problem. Phenylpropanolamine is able to increase sphincter tone in the urethra thus curtailing inadvertent urine leakage.

It comes in the name of Prion and others. Sometimes this will tone the bladder enough that after a while you might be able to discontinue the drug but you need to leave that up to your vet.