I was at the dog park the other day, chatting with a dog-obsessed friend who knows me really well, when another dog owner came over and mentioned that her dog had recently been diagnosed with a bladder infection.

I smiled at her and opened my mouth to ask a question, and noticed that my friend was shaking her head, scrunching up her eyes and basically indicating with every available bit of body language that something terrible was about to happen. I frowned, and asked, "What?"

"Please," she said. "Not the bladder infection lecture again."

The dog owner looked from me to my friend, and back again. "Bladder infection lecture?" she finally asked.

My friend sighed. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she said.

So now you're all wondering: What's the big deal with canine bladder infections? The dog has one, a couple of weeks of antibiotics, and the dog's (more...)