bloody sheath

Question
I was holding my rat on his back and rubbing his belly (he LOVES that) and i noticed the tip of his penis had a bit of blood on it. what could cause this and should i be terribly concerned?

Answer
If he is urinating blood, this is of course a cause for concern.  He should see a qualified vet.  I can pretty much say it may be a urinary tract infection and he should be given antibiotics.  Hopefully the vet wont put him through useless urine cultures and simply give him baytril and bactrim to fight off whatever organism it is causing it. Using both drugs are fine to do and will just ensure that the bacteria will be killed since together these two drugs kill off both gram negative and gram positive bacteria.

It could be a number of things, though, so no matter what, since blood is not a good sign, its vet time!  Oh and if you need a vet that is a qualified board certified exotic vet, let me know and I will happily give you names of vets in your area rather than waste money on a wanna be exotic vet, which are regular vets that see exotics but only really know the basics when it comes to small mammals and to be honest, from what I have been reading this week, they will probably tell you to put the rat to sleep!  I am serious. This week I have gotten at least half ao dozen emails from upset rat owners that said their rat was sick with this or that and the vet suggested putting the rat to sleep....not even bothering to offer treatment insisting rats cant have this or that procedure done.  One in particular was a rat with a nasty infection in the eye.  The vet said he needed put to sleep because the infection would spread to his blood stream and that they cannot remove the eye, this type of surgery is impossible to do on rats.  Lo and behold I had a photo to show her of my own rat that had his eye removed last year for the same thing her vet suggested euthanasia for.  Not just my own rat but many many other rats have safely and successfully had their eye removed with no problem so because this vet had NO IDEA what he was doing he just assumed it could not be done because HE could not do it.
I dont mean to be such a crab today but really I wouldnt be shocked if the vet didnt say the rat has some type of cancer that is causing blood in the urine and needs euthanize!  
Just never listen to that kind of stuff esp if the rat is acting fine otherwise!   Sorry for the rant I just felt the need to warn others too, because other people read the answers to the questions that are asked of me so I figured I would get this off my chest here and now.

Is your rat eating and acting ok ?