Why Should I Home Test My Diabetic Dog?
For those of you that are faithful readers, I know that you’ve been waiting for this topic to come up again. I try not to repeat myself, but this topic bears repeating over and over again. I will share that lately, the Canine Diabetes Facebook groups are growing at an alarming rate, to the tune of 100 new members a week. Besides this being a sad statistic, it gives us reason to encourage all owners of Canine Diabetics to take charge of the management of this disease.
I wish that I could say that all veterinarians are fluent in at least the fundamentals of treating this disease. I wish I could, but I can’t. This is not their fault; they can’t possibly know everything about every species and all pathology for each of those species. The same is true of human doctors; if you need a knee replacement, you likely will not expect your general practitioner to treat you start to finish for this procedure. In human medicine, there are specialists for most things that can go wrong with us. This is somewhat true of the veterinary community, but unless you live in a huge city, you likely won’t be able to find a veterinary endocrinologist around the corner. So before condemning your vet, let’s be fair and take responsibility for learning all that we can and become an advocate for our “Sugar Babies”.
This is when I suggest that you find a vet that you can work with, not one that is going to tell you that it’s their way or the highway. In the blog post, You, Your Vet and Your Diabetic Dog, there are some questions that I suggest that you ask when looking for a vet to partner with in this Diabetic Journey. The first step in this journey is testing. If your current vet is against home testing, perhaps you need to find one that will encourage you to do so. Unless your vet is on call 24/7 and gives you his/her cell phone number so you can call any time, any day, find one that will empower you and work WITH you!
Why should you test your Diabetic Dog? Because YOU are now your pup’s pancreas and it is your job to keep your pup safe. I hope that you haven’t had a reason to take your pup to the vet for an issue since diagnosis, but if you have, you’ll notice that the first thing that they do is to check BG (Blood Glucose). It is the key to all things Canine Diabetes. I know that there are some that have extenuating circumstances and for whatever reason can’t possibly test at home, but those cases are few and far between.
If you have a meter and are testing at home, you can stay on top of trends and catch any small issues before they turn into big issues. If you are testing at home, you will be able to get your pup in a safe range much faster than not. If you’re testing, you can call your numbers into your vet every week and make dosing changes without the cost of a vet run curve which is very expensive compared to running your curve at home. For example, the vet that I took Max to, charged $120.00 for a 3 reading curve. I could run a 7 reading curve at home for under $10.00 and my numbers weren’t affected by the stress of him being in a cage all day with sick animals around him and all the activity of a clinic setting.
I know that it seems like a lot to do in the beginning, but once you have your technique down, you can do your test in under a minute! That’s just 2 minutes a day to be sure that it is safe to inject your pup with his/her full dose of insulin. In the beginning, it was all so overwhelming, then I embraced the fact that this was our new normal and if I wanted Max around for as long as possible, this was just what we needed to do. From that day on, I viewed his care as a way to thank him for all that he had given me through the years. Returning the favor was not a chore, it was an honor.
The cornerstone of managing this disease is having the ability to know where BG (Blood Glucose) is at all times. If something is off, you will immediately know if it is diabetes related and on the flip side, your numbers will tell you if something is “brewing” long before the symptoms are noticeable through behavior. In most cases, you’ll know if there’s an infection brewing somewhere or if you need to push water because there are ketones, or if your pup is prone to pancreatitis, that there is a flare on the way. All things that if you know they are coming, you can take measures to prevent problems and big vet bills in the near future.
I hope that if you aren’t a home tester yet, that you will at least consider becoming one.
Notice that for most of the products or groups that I mention, the text is linked to a website that you can purchase that item or a link to join the group mentioned. Just click on the colored text (red or blue, depending what device you are on) and it should take you right to the item or group. 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…