My 13 year old yorkie has recentley been diagnosed as diabetic,i can cope fine with the urine testing and injecting of insulin but it does seem to be taking a long time to get stable on a fixed dose of insulin.I dont know any one else with diabetic dog to compare notes.My old man has been my best friend for so long,we have coped with collapsed trachea all these years and we will cope with this too.Any advice or info will be much appreciated.Thankyou.

cant offer any advice but as I have a yorkie too I wanted to say good luck to you with this, I know it cant be easy.

this should bring your post to the top for others to comment on aswell ;)

Sadly I have just had to pts my diabetic lab x. She was diagnosed over 2 years ago. She went blind during the early period and we had the chataracts removed so she could have quality of life. She was fit and active throughout. When our other dog was pts she stopped eating and became very very unstable and we had the difficult decision to make. Originally I tested her urine daily and gave insulin to suit this so it went up and down 1 or 2 units often, other times fairly steady. After a visit to the vet he said that most people just test maybe once a week and adjust the insulin on a weekly basis, mainly down to the cost of the insulin, so this I started to do and did not notice any significant difference in her. Is this how you determine how much insulin to give your dog? Or do you test more regularly?
Bev

One of my Labradors went diabetic at about 10 years old and was on insulin injections until her death at 13 years old.

The thing I found was that it was so easy to start the dosage yo-yoing by over reacting to variations shown when testing. Food, obviously should always be the same, same quantities at the same time. I divided it into 4 meals to give a steady sugar intake spread throughout the day. Same with exercise, not excessive and roughly the same each day. I injected at the same time each day no mater if it was a working day or weekend so as far as I could there was no change in sugar usage.

I tested every day and if I ever had a problem twice a day, morning and evening but the thing there is that the morning figure would not be the same as the evening so should never be compared. Only ever compare morning with morning and evening with evening. I always wrote the figures down for future reference.

If I found the insulin does needed to go up or down I would always try to determine the reason. Maybe a visitor which had got her a bit excited? Something different she had eaten? There is usually a reason and if nothing else can be found maybe a medical reason. A diabetic bitch should never be allowed to come into season. The hormones will throw the does for a ball of chalk! Kate had to be spayed in an emergence!!

If I could find a good reason for any variation in sugar level I never changed the dose until testing her the next day and found time and again that the level had returned to usual. If any change was needed then I only changed half the difference the first time. Over compensating is the biggest source of yo-yoing! If for some reason an increase in insulin was needed, and the sugar level started to return to normal I would lower the insulin slightly slower than the level is falling (If you can understand what I mean) The thing about it is. You are testing what the last dose of insulin resulted in, not what the next dose is going to give so if it was falling with yesterdays dose then lowering the dose still further could easily make it fall too far!

Vary the place you inject, anywhere from the neck almost to the tail! Using the same place all the time can cause the sugar level to rise! Dogs can also get a reducing benefit from a type of insulin. They seem, for want of a better word to build up an immunity to it and you find you have to keep increasing the dosage just to stand still. This happened to Kate. She was on a bovine insulin to start with but after a couple of years I had to change to a porcine based insulin. Unfortunately the dosage is not the same for the two and I had to establish the new level all over again. But it worked and I got her stabilised again.

Sugar cataracts are always a risk, Kate went blind but dogs fair far better without sight than us and it never really bothered her. She still had her run off the lead in the fields.

Best wishes, John

THANKS FOR ALL THE ADVICE,IT WAS MOST HELPFUL.BENJIE IS 13 NOW SO ANY TIME WE HAVE IS SPECIAL.I THINK I NEED TO CONCENTRATE ON GETTING THE DIET STABLE,NOT EASY WHEN HE IS A CANINE DUSTBIN.THANKS AGAIN ,
LYNDSEY

I would agree with John, I fed Jess at the same time every single day but twice a day, her routine didn't really vary at all. Her exercise was again at the same time, with the same amount, only rarely did it differ. It was very restricting, but fortunately I was able to do it. Good luck.
Bev

It is a little restrictive Bev but we still managed the occasional caravan holiday with her! It took a little care and knowing that her insulin requirement would go up slightly I used to anticipate it and found keeping it under control was not a problem. It is all down to giving that little thought to what you are doing.

You would never believe the biggest problem I had Bev. While Kate was on four feeds a day it made sense to feed Bethany at the same time. When Kate died I decided to get Bethany back to a sensible feeding arrangement but she was having none of that!! We had a real big argument about it and for a few days she refused to speak to me or even look at me! At that time I had Kate diabetic and Bethany was epileptic, not a well dog to my name!

Best wishes, John