Fructosamine Testing My Diabetic Dog
Your vet recommends that you have a Fructosamine Test done on your diabetic pup… hmmmmm. Besides being a mouthful, what is that test? Here’s one definition: “Serum Fructosamine provides a retrospective view of the average blood glucose concentration that your dog has achieved over the past 2 to 3 weeks.”
If you are testing at home, there’s no need for a Fructosamine test. If you want to know what your average BG (blood glucose) is over the last 7, 14 or 30 days, your meter will tell you! There’s no reason to pay a bunch of money to find out a result that you already know! I chose to spend that money on strips instead of getting a number that really doesn’t tell me anything. IF you aren’t testing at home, then perhaps this test is an indicator, but it doesn’t tell you what the highs and lows are, it simply tells you what the average BG (Blood Glucose) has been over the last 2-3 weeks. As we talked about in the last post, your dog could be in rebound and you’d never know it because you don’t get individual readings with this test. When it comes to actively managing this disease, this test is not a very helpful tool in my view.
As we’ve discussed in prior posts ( Hypoglycemic Events), the Fructosamine test doesn’t help you in the day to day management of Canine Diabetes, nor does it help you with the proper information to make an insulin dose adjustment, so if your vet recommends that you have the test and you’re testing at home, I’d definitely ask several questions, the first one being…. WHY?
The test may be helpful at diagnosis, but even then it doesn’t really give any day to day helpful information. This is dynamic disease (meaning that it changes) so unless you have unlimited funds, and even if you do, there are so many other things to spend your money on. The first item being a hand held meter to check BG (Blood Glucose) at home. When you test at home, you have the ability to know where your dog’s numbers are at any time of any day. To me, that is the most valuable information that you can possibly have when you have a dog with diabetes.
Even if you don’t test now, or you don’t want to for whatever reason, I am encouraging you to get a meter. Get it now!! There will come a day when you will need it and none of those scenarios are good ones. If you live next door to an emergency vet clinic and have unlimited funds, then by all means, don’t have one on hand. However, if you don’t have unlimited funds and the emergency clinic is 15 minutes or even farther away, PLEASE have a meter with your supplies. I can’t tell you how many times in our Facebook group ( Canine Diabetes Support & Information) we have a dog in crisis and that is the first time that an owner uses that meter. We have talked many a non-tester through their first test “under fire”. Please don’t wait until it’s an emergency to at least learn how to test. If funds are an issue, please know that Advocate will be able to get you a PetTest Meter Kit for just the cost of shipping with promo code RETRIEVE19. WOW! What you do with that knowledge day to day is up to you, but at least knowing that you have the supplies and the ability to use them could one day save your dog’s life. A testing starter kit is a minimal expense to know that you have the ability to manage a crisis.
If you have any thoughts or ideas for topics that you’d like to see covered here, please feel free to comment below or send me an email at NancyForPetTest@pharmasupply.com. As always, please “like” this blog post or any of the others that have helped you or just refreshed your memory. Look for new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
Until next time…