Your Stress and Your Diabetic Dog
Today we talk about a topic that I wish I had been more aware of when my Max was diagnosed. That topic is stress and how it relates to your pup. What do we know for sure? We know that other than a donut, stress has the biggest impact on our pup’s day to day lives. We see it all the time, just walk through the door of the vet clinic and bang, huge jump in numbers. Well now there is a study that validates what we already know to be true. This study was done in Sweden and it correlates our stress with our pup’s stress levels.
This study was done using hair samples of both the pet owner and the person’s dog. What did they find? You guessed it; they found that the cortisol level in both the human hair and the dog hair matched up perfectly! When the pet owner was stressed, so was their pup. If this isn’t incentive to get our stress under control, I don’t know what is! We all think that just because we don’t break down in front of our pups, that they don’t know that we are stressed. Read on…
As it turns out, dogs don’t just detect stress with their eyes, they can sense it through other means as well. We all know that our canine companions have an extraordinary sense of smell. They can actually smell the change in body chemistry (sweat) when we are happy or sad or fearful. Dogs become very stressed when they smell fear or worry on their humans.
Most dog owners have a strong bond with their pups, but as I have mentioned before the bond between a Diabetic dog and his/her owner is even stronger. You are their world and somehow they know that without your help, they would no longer be here. Doing twice a day testing and injections builds your bond with that pup quickly so they are even more in tuned with you as a result.
This is just one of the good reasons to get a grip on your stress levels, especially if it has anything to do with this Diabetes diagnosis. We want to manage this disease well and provide the best care possible for our pups while not creating another issue in the process. I will share with you here that I have seen several times that when a “sugar Mama/Papa” is totally freaked out about this disease, it is often times reflected in the pup’s numbers. Take a look at your journal through a particularly stressful time that you can recall. Was your pup running higher at that time? If this scenario sounds like you, please find a way to manage your expectations for both you and your pup.
Over time as you get accustomed to this disease, you won’t be holding on so tight to every number that you see on your meter. I have written in the past about taking care of yourself so that you can better care for your pup. One particular post can be found here: https://shoppettest.com/blog/selfcare-and-your-diabetic-dog/. Please read it and find something to do to relieve your stress around this disease, if not for you, do it for your pup! If you have other stressors in your life (who doesn’t), then now is the time to manage those as well. Maybe 2020 can be the year (or the decade) where we get a grip on what we allow to get to us and cause us stress. I think that we will all be better off as a result. As always, remember to breathe!
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Until next time…