Excessive urination, drinking and ear infection

by Nancy
(Venus, TX)

My Brutus is now 10 years old. He is an inside fur baby but in the last couple of months, he has wanted to spend most of his time outside. He loves the cooler weather so this time of the year, he does love to go outside and lay on the cold concrete. But that's not always the best for him as he has arthritis issues and I know all too well as I have it myself that cold weather is not good on the old arthritic joints. He does get Cosequin daily but I have never seen that it does much good. He also is on grain free dry food because he gets ear infections when on anything else. In fact I just took him to the vet yesterday because he did have infected ears. He is on steroids for a few days and then goes on antibiotics for 2 weeks after that. Having said all that, all of the sudden he is drinking huge amounts of water and peeing a lot more. He has always drank close to 2 gallons of water a day regardless of the season, but in the last several days he is drinking more and peeing more. In fact, there has been 3 times now that if I don't get up at night and let him out immediately, he will simply go into the hallway and pee on the carpet rather than holding it. Do you think this is simply due to his age in that he can't hold his pee as he used to? Is he peeing more because he is drinking more? And is he drinking more because there is something wrong with him? I told the vet yesterday about his drinking so much more water and he didn't seem to be concerned. But he said if I wanted to, they could run some tests for diabetes. I didn't want to do it right now. I just want to get him over the ear infections. Are there reports of Pyr's getting diabetes? Or is all this simply signs of the aging process.