How the Hank Turns

[Shellie]

Re: New to Diabetes

Hi Carol! Sorry about the ambiguity of my last post! I meant near the base of Hank's tail. I tend to think of that as a dog's 'bum'. I used one of the syringes (29g) to prick him and went in the 1/2 inch length of the needle. Luckily, he has a nice fat pad back there so no worries on being too invasive.

I work in a hospital lab and one of the things that I do is draw blood...phlebotomy. So I am very aware of capillary vs. venous blood and can assure you that this was capillary. Many times in the 'human' world...we actually DO use venous blood rather than capillary to do blood glucose levels on different types of glucometers. We use capillary blood to do all sorts of tests on different patients. Human babies, for the most part, get all their testing done on capillary blood and results are generally the same as for venous.

BUT...all that said...I worry too about the invasiveness of all the testing I have to do on Hank. I want to make sure that I am doing the minimum necessary for taking care of him. I was very glad he let me try that one last night...I needed the reassurance of the bg level.

So please...no worries...I'm not poking him full of holes! I promise! But thank you SO much for being concerned! Makes me feel great to know that you really do care! Hugs!!!!!!

Shell

[Patty]

Re: New to Diabetes

Shell, Just wanted to say Hi to you and Hank

I'm traveling this week so haven't been around as often. Looks like you've gotten some great responses to your questions. Congrats on the bg test last night! You sound like I did at the beginning. Ali just wouldn't give me blood no matter where I tried. We finally found a 'sweet spot' that works for her (lip stick method). Everyone has their own tips and tricks.

Anyway, glad to have you here!
Take care,
Patty

[k9diabetes]

Re: New to Diabetes

So two main questions to start with...first...I know he needs to eat before I give him his injection and I've managed to get some food into him right before and/or a bit more after his shot. My vet suggested small meals thru-out the day but I seem to be hearing that two meals with insulin after is optimal. Does he have to have insulin with every meal? (and no...not give him extra but pare down the meals to match his shots only.) Only two meals a day will likely not happen since he's so darn picky.

Shell

Hi Shellie,

I think it's generally best to start with two meals and injections a day, do curves, see how it's working, and go from there.

But there are some dogs who can't do that for various reasons - some who have had pancreatitis, for example, do better with small meals throughout the day.

Dogs really vary in how they process the insulin and their food, and it varies with what food they eat too since not all dogs here (maybe not even most) are on the prescription diet.

The worry with small meals, for me, is that some dogs get a BIG kick from the insulin almost as soon as it's injected. With no food to go with that insulin, their blood sugar can drop too low. So risk of hypoglycemia is worrisome.

The other thing that can happen is they get food late in the day and have no insulin left to go with it, so food given 8 or 10 hours after their injection could be driving the blood sugar very high in the afternoon.

It can also be a difficult schedule to do consistently.

So the best thing to do with any regimen is to do a curve so you can see exactly what is happening as far as the food / insulin balance and go from there.

Any schedule you can keep consistently and keeps your dog's blood sugar in a good range is okay by me.

Natalie

[CarolW]

Re: New to Diabetes

Okay, Shell; you gave me more peace of mind with your description! I'd still go for lancets and plunging THOSE needles only as far as they go; haha!

You have a lovely, useful, inventive mind!
Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:13:48 (PDT)

[MaryLea]

Re: New to Diabetes

Shellie,

First~~welcome to the forum! You already know you've found a good place for support and information.

Our little Ruffles was also a cairn terrier mix, although smaller than your Hank. She was a sweetie--except when she was eating. Couldn't mess with her or her food! Unlike Hank, she'd eat almost anything! That changed after dx with diabetes and subsequent complications.

We found a "sweet" spot at the top of her upper canine teeth which would yield a drop of blood almost any time. Took a while to figure that out, but once we did things went smoothly until she became very ill near the end. She really liked the treats which came immediately before and after BG testing.

Watching and wishing the best for you and Hank!

Mary

[Shellie]

Re: New to Diabetes

Carol...glad I could reassure you! I did go and get some 28g...still too small and have some 26g lancets on order. I really, really want to use the lancets since they are designed for the small testing we do.

And thanks for the welcome, Patty and MaryLea! Is good to know I'll find a 'sweet spot'! We'll keep trying...Hank is such a patient guy...just sighs and goes with the flow.

Natalie, after the debacle of this morning's meal...yes, I ended up giving him cat food...(sigh)... I think the two meal method just might do the trick. IF he's HUNGRY...he'll eat. So tomorrow...we start. I worry about spikes and lows with feeding him thru-out the day too ..and I'm sure it won't hurt him one bit. My neighbor comes in halfway thru my work day and will give him a duck strip for his treat so that should keep him going.

It's all so overwhelming and I think until we are doing better with the bg's and have a curve or two to work with...I'll just stay a tad frazzled.

I am curious...obviously this is WAY down the line...but what do you all do when you go on vacation? How on earth do you ask a friend to care for a dog with this much work?

Thanks so much again for the replies! You guys really are awesome!

Shell and Hank

[SandyL]

Re: New to Diabetes

Hahaha. VACATION? What's that?

We were going to go on a cruise or to Hawaii.... I personally don't trust anyone with Tiggy so instead we rented a cabin in Tahoe for a week so we could take her with. I figure it's going to be that way for years to come

Sandy

[Shellie]

Re: New to Diabetes

Yeah...that's about what I thought, too! haha I think I dimly remember what one of those is like...

...wonder if you can take a dog on a cruise ship....*sigh*....

Shell

[Shellie]

Re: New to Diabetes

Shellie,

First~~welcome to the forum! You already know you've found a good place for support and information.

Our little Ruffles was also a cairn terrier mix, although smaller than your Hank. She was a sweetie--except when she was eating. Couldn't mess with her or her food! Unlike Hank, she'd eat almost anything! That changed after dx with diabetes and subsequent complications.

We found a "sweet" spot at the top of her upper canine teeth which would yield a drop of blood almost any time. Took a while to figure that out, but once we did things went smoothly until she became very ill near the end. She really liked the treats which came immediately before and after BG testing.

Watching and wishing the best for you and Hank!

Mary

How lucky for you that she'd eat! Mr. Pickypants over here...*sigh* ...

The treats...and of course...what else but CAT treats!...we made sure that those were ok'd by the vet...

I have to wonder if he isn't a tad confused about his identity...

And you have my extra sympathy for your loss! I've been there with the seriously ill baby and it is never easy! My last cat, Nina, had advanced kidney disease...always a trial and it ended with my putting her to sleep. BUT...I wouldn't give up one second of my time with her for all the pain I have losing her. It was worth it all! I know you get that!

Take care!

Shell and Hank

[jjefferjo]

Re: New to Diabetes

Hi Shellie
Eddie and I welcome you. Vacations? I have taken a few since Ed was diagnosed most recenttly to Florida and I have a annual trip to Catalina planned.
I have a pet sitter that spends the night and does a runby at noon.
Found her quite by accident 1 week after diagnosis- her daughter helps her out and Ed knows her. I also have trained a friend to test and text me the numbers for instruction
I no longer board him- did once with his vet very early on and he did well-they know him there-but anight they are alone.
You could check with your vet, maybe a vet tech could help out.
Jj

[buddingartist]

Re: New to Diabetes

Hi Shell and joining the group in welcoming you and Hank.

I no longer post often since we lost our little Buddy 5 months ago however, I noticed that Hank had acute ketoacidosis when diagnosed and that his numbers seem to remain in the 500's. I would suggest that you continue checking for keytones and for that, you can get Ketostix to monitor at home.

As for food, both Buddy and Cleo were free feeding for 10 years before Buddy's dx so I know what you are going through.

What helped when Buddy didn't want to eat was to add warm water to his kibbles and let it sit for a while. Some people have added low fat chicken low sodium chicken consomme. It sort of create a bit of a gravy.

To that, I sometimes have added cottage cheese, sometimes sprinkled low fat parmesan cheese, low fat baby food (no garlic) and towards the end, I reduced the amount of kibbles and added a mix of ground beef and chicken, which I had previously cooked, rinsed thoroughly, and rinsed again under warm water before putting it in his bowl.

To that, I also added a mix of cooked and ground brocoli, green beans and spinach.

Yes, we fell for those baby eyes looking at you with a <mommy I am starving< look but until the people of this board convinced me to limit the feedings to 2 daily, I just could not even think regulation. Mind you, my Buddy had a multitude of other medical problems which didn't help however, with patience and persistence, they accepted the 2 meal regimen.

As treats, I switched them to zuchinni, green/red/yellow pepper, turnips (the soft ones). At first, they spat it out but once they realized that those were the treats, they started really enjoying them.

Good luck
Louise

[MaryLea]

Re: New to Diabetes

Forgot to mention that when Ruffles began to be picky about her food, we added Step 2, Gerber's Turkey Gravy to her kibble. Worked most of the time. We also used to crush her meds into just that gravy (1 TBSP.~~warmed, of course!, no kibble) when she quit taking them for us. She would lick the gravy almost every time. It's not many calories and we did not notice a change to her BGs.

Mary

[Shellie]

And another big question in here!

Hi Shell and joining the group in welcoming you and Hank.

I no longer post often since we lost our little Buddy 5 months ago however, I noticed that Hank had acute ketoacidosis when diagnosed and that his numbers seem to remain in the 500's. I would suggest that you continue checking for keytones and for that, you can get Ketostix to monitor at home.

As for food, both Buddy and Cleo were free feeding for 10 years before Buddy's dx so I know what you are going through.


Yes, we fell for those baby eyes looking at you with a <mommy I am starving< look but until the people of this board convinced me to limit the feedings to 2 daily, I just could not even think regulation. Mind you, my Buddy had a multitude of other medical problems which didn't help however, with patience and persistence, they accepted the 2 meal regimen.

As treats, I switched them to zuchinni, green/red/yellow pepper, turnips (the soft ones). At first, they spat it out but once they realized that those were the treats, they started really enjoying them.

Good luck
Louise

Hi Louise! To let you know...I am using the keto diastix every day to keep an eye on the ketones. So far so good although tonight...not 100% sure there isn't a trace so I'll recheck him in the am. Likely just my bad eyesight.

And yes...Mr. Pickypants as I have taken to calling him is a tough one. He seems to do ok if I mix at least one third cat food (his favorite..beef) in and will eat it all. I've always free fed as well...canned food for breakfast and dinner with dry out all the time. So it's not completely odd for him to eat just the two times a day.

I do have a question....what is the food time frame here? I feed him his canned...then how long til insulin shot? Then can he eat a bit more after the shot? Tonight ...he ate his canned food...then within ten minutes or so, I gave him his insulin. Then approximately half an hour later...he ate some dry food. I thought it would be ok since it was so close in time. But I'm really unsure of that.

He might be doing the 'puppy eye' thing at me...and I realize it's MY problem and not his. I'm the one who is caving to his requests. Is very hard NOT to give in to him...and to LOVE him with food. I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that technically...I'm KILLING him with it. I'm not helping him at all...all I'm doing is feeding him little bits of poison with every treat. *sigh* Lifetime of 'food love' is really hard to overcome but I am getting better.

Thanks again!

Shell and Hank

[CarolW]

Re: New to Diabetes

Maybe 50 years ago, my mother said she learned with one of her dogs not to see food as love. you can see that remark struck me (hehe).

She made it when a dog of hers was begging at the human dinner-table.

I learned a lot of great stuff from my mother, but it turns out that remark, while it had useful aspects, wasn't really complete, because about 35 years after that, I learned to TRAIN dogs using food, in a way that made the food be earned, rather than being a bribe.

I'm amused that though I no longer have a diabetic dog, I freak out still about "bad" treats. Bought some thinking they had to be good - by Wellness - only to discover they upset Camellia's tum, so I returned the treats, but the tum upset remains. We seem to be getting over that now, with a fair bit of work from me.

Laughing at myself; Camellia doesn't think it's that funny. I can hear myself saying, in a totally shocked voice, that major ingredients in Wellness WellBites - chicken and lamb recipe - has a lot of vegetable glycerin (think slippery, I guess), and - horror of horrors - cane molasses! And sea salt - totally unnecessary in dog food. And I have a friend who experimented making sea salt, with great success; yet I see no particular advantage for the eater of it over other salt.

I guess what I think now is that food is life-giving sustenance for dogs, so for us to give it to them is a greatly loving act - ALONG WITH our OTHER greatly loving acts for our diabetic dogs! (or any dogs, but once we've had diabetic dogs, I'm guessing, our perspectives tend to change - perhaps forever!)

Effectively, I guess, when we adopt dogs to be our animal companions, we promise to them that we will do our very best to care for them (any pun intended) for the rest of their lives.

With my diabetic Kumbi, what I learned was, to think of giving shots and testing BG levels, I was doing all I could to support and maintain Kumbi so he could have a great life as a diabetic. That kind of thinking seemed to assist us - Kumbi and me - a lot. Same was true for my un-diabetic Kwali, Kumbi's elder companion - and by now, with Camellia, of course, it remains with me.

Dogs respond so much to OUR feelings and emotions - being aware of that helped me along with all my dogs.

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:56:32 (PDT)

[diggydog]

Re: New to Diabetes

Hi Shell,

Welcome!

Just passing through but wanted to quickly share a bit of my story with you.

Alfie was free fed before dx and when I first tried to get him on to feeding twice a day he was not impressed and just refused to eat. We done the whole putting his food down then taking it away if he didn't eat it but that wasn't working so great and more often than not he just didn't eat.

I started to put warm gravy on his dry food and let is soak in for a few mins then put it down for him. He loved it and as we were just starting out I wasn't too concerned to how it was affecting his bg's as at least he was eating and getting used to the 2 meals a day.
I gradually started to water down the gravy bit by bit over about a week or 2 until all he was getting was some warm water on his food. By that point he was used to our new routine and I was able to miss out putting the water on it all together and he was happy enough to eat when his food got put out and we have never looked back.

We dont really have any treats now - Alfie sometimes gets a bit dried liver after bg testing but thats about all he gets now..... he does love a cuddle tho so he gets plenty of them instead of treats.

How you man starts eating better soon.

Allison & Alfie