The Dog Bible by Tracie Hotchner

Author:Tracie Hotchner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

♦ Ongoing Testing

Testing is easy with urine dipsticks available from your vet. The homemade cup holder to catch urine that is generally recommended sounds primitive, but it works. Take a thin wire clothes hanger, open it up and bend the end. Stick a paper cup on the bottom and as the dog urinates place the cup beneath the stream (your dog may give you a “What’s up with you?!” look that gives new meaning to the phrase “No more wire hangers”).

Keeping close tabs on the glucose level and proper insulin level is especially important during the first stages of treatment, when it may take a while to determine the right insulin level for your dog. Regular checks of these levels are also important, since changes in dosage and/or type of insulin are often necessary to bring the disease under control. The test for blood-sugar levels is called the blood glucose curve, and it involves the dog spending a day at the veterinary clinic. Over a period of twelve to twenty-four hours, blood is drawn at specified intervals to see when the blood sugar peaks and decreases. This way your vet can calculate—or recalculate—the amount of insulin to give and the timing of injections.

Regular blood tests are advised at least every six months to check for other conditions that could aggravate the diabetes, and other more sophisticated tests are also available. Cushing’s, liver disease, hypothyroidism and infections are common complications of canine diabetes that can be identified with blood tests.

Regular urine cultures are important, too. Diabetic dogs are prone to bladder infections, so urine cultures should be done to check for this. Dogs may not show any signs of bladder infection and a urinalysis may look normal. Some vets will recommend cranberry supplements to help control bladder infections.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.