I am glad that Chelsea doesn’t have diabetes but just as a reference for other Yorkietalkers, I just wanted to add that I had a dog who was diabetic for many years. So if you are offered the opportunity to adopt a dog with diabetes or if your own dog gets it, don’t panic or look the other way. You and your dog can deal with it quite well! Frederick did eventually pass away at the age of 13 due to a heart attack brought on by attempt to flush his body of toxins that had built up in his system due to kidney failure – so I guess you could say his diabetes did kill him in the end – but still – he was 13! He was the third dog my family ever owned and suffered from many of our newbie mistakes (he was purchased from a backyard breeder, he eat “Gains Burgers” (no longer on the market!) and chicken for dinner every night, and was very chubby! Plus, he put up with a household of three young kids – two of which were hyperactive boys).
Diabetes isn’t the easiest thing to deal with but it is controllable and a dog with it can live a long time with a reasonably good quality of life. Freddy had to have insulin injections twice a day. We used test sticks in his urine in the morning to determine his insulin dosage (I wonder now if dog medicine has caught up with human – if anyone currently has a diabetic dog – do they now take blood samples (far more accurate) instead of urin?). We had a family friend who was a physician, which was fortunate because this was during the height of the aids epidemic and needles weren’t the easiest thing to come by. So we got our needles for free and a small 10 pound (well, for a Yorkie that’s big) dog could last a LONG time on a single vile of insulin. We just kept it in the frig. I had to be sure he eat his dinner. IF he went into sugar shock, we usually gave him honey so we kept that plastic bear brand of honey in the house and cans of baby food if and when he’d go off his food. Even if we thought he was hyperglycemic –as it was safer to give him too much sugar than that too much insulin. What it ultimately amounted to was management. With a little dog, it’s not difficult to manage, so we did. The only other down side to his disease was that he did eventually develop cataracts and go blind, but again, there are plenty of 13 year old dogs out there without diabetes who also have cataracts! It was as much a function of his growing old as it was of his condition.
Now I have a dog with Addison’s disease and there are a lot of parrells in the management of this condition. Tonight, I must go home and give Bun his DOCP shot! |