Have you heard about the bionic pancreas?

Section of pancreas of dog. X 250. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The title of this post sounds like the setup for a punchline, but it's no such thing:  it's actually in clinical studies right now, spurred by a father's need to help his Type 1 son.  You can read the story on TheDiabetesSite, where there is a petition going to get the FDA to move it up to the top of their review list once it is sent to them.  Their goal is 10,000 signatures, and as of right now (12/28/13) they have 4,127.  This petition has implications for everyone (humans and animals) with diabetes, since the more pressure that is put on the FDA for expediting new diabetes treatments each time, the better for all of us.  

As it stands now, the bionic pancreas is a type 1 treatment and would not be practical for animals, but, as with any new idea, there is no way of knowing where it might lead others in their research and development efforts.  I urge you to sign the petition.

TheDiabetesSite.com is part of the Greater Good Network, where users click on a box to help various causes for free.  I've had a link to TheAnimalRescueSite.com since I began this blog, and I like to think that I've drawn some people to make clicking part of their daily activities. 

And, today there's a bumper crop of related articles for you.    

Related articles

• Medtronic hasn't made true artificial pancreas yet. The next 4 steps for this type 1 diabetes treatment (medcitynews.com)
• The Eyes are a Window to the...Pancreas? (ivanhoe.com)
• 4 Companies Completely Changing the Way We Treat Diabetes (dailyfinance.com)
• Medical advances made for diabetics (consumersresearch.org)
• Insulin "capsules" may ultimately replace daily injections for diabetics (gizmag.com)
• JDRF: Patient Needs Must Drive T1 Diabetes Innovation (diabetesmine.com)
• Wearing your pancreas on the outside. (northernmum.com)
• Dog Blood Glucose (dog-health-guide.org)
• D.A.D Diabetic Alert Dad (charliesfight2013.wordpress.com)
• New look identifies crucial clumping of diabetes-causing proteins (eurekalert.org)

Ask your Diabetic Dog: Got Water?

Bucket-headed dog (Photo credit: Paul Kidd)

It's kind of strange to feature this topic in winter, but WebMd has an article on how much water dogs need.  After I read it, I realized that I often did not pay attention to how much Tony drank; in fact, thanks to the other two dogs in the house, it would have been hard to keep track.  What I'm thinking now is that I should have made a greater effort.  Those of you who followed Tony's story from the start may remember that my first inkling that he had diabetes was his frequent urination.  However, I never thought about keeping some kind of track of his water consumption before that.  If I had, I might have noticed the problem earlier and avoided some of his later issues.

Here's the basic requirement, according to the article:
 

 "A good rule of thumb: Make sure your dog gets at least 1 ounce of water daily for each pound he weighs. That means a 20-pound dog needs at least 20 ounces of water every day. That's more than 2 cups, or as much as in some bottles of water or soda.

To help you keep track of how much water your dog drinks, make a note of how high you fill his water bowl and how far the level has dropped the next day."

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• When is a Great Blue Heron Most Like a Dog? (babsjeheron.wordpress.com)
• Dogs Prefer Their Water Via Toilette (helpmejoseph.typepad.com)
• This Photo Of The Obamas' Dog Can Legitimately Be Called Epic (businessinsider.com)

Sushi the Shih Tzu- A Fictional Diabetic Dog

English: Shih Tzu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

About this time of year I start looking for novels to add to the Christmas shelf on my Nook, and I picked up Antiques Slay Ride by Barbara Allan the other day.  It's a 99-cent short story ebook, and it's part of an ongoing series.  I can't vouch for the other entries in the series, except to say that Sushi, a diabetic and blind Shih Tzu is one of the recurring characters.  It left me wanting more Sushi, which is how I usually feel anyway. 

Anyway, it's not great art, but it's about time that somebody thought of including a diabetic dog in a story.  If nothing else, it raises awareness, not just about diabetes, but also about daily life in this situation.  My one caveat about Sushi's treatment in the story is that her owner seems rather cavalier about giving her treats -- as you know, not a good idea with a diabetic dog.

I'm putting up a list of other Christmas stories I've enjoyed, in the box on the right.  I hope your holidays are everything you want them to be.

Related articles

• Getting to Know the Shih Tzu Breed (dogs.answers.com)
• Caring for Your Dog: Shih Tzu Eyes (veterinary.answers.com)
• Shi Tzu Ornaments (dog-gonnit.com)
• my Tzu my Love my Life... our Journey (shirleylskwong.wordpress.com)

Diabetes Awareness Month is Here- Diabetes in Animals Needs Some Attention, Too!

English: Prevalence of diabetes worldwide in 2000 (per 1000 inhabitants). World average was 28.23‰. no data less than 7.5 7.5-15 15-22.5 22.5-30 30-37.5 37.5-45 45-52.5 52.5-60 60-67.5 67.5-75 75-82.5 more than 82.5 Note: I interpreted France in the data as including the overseas departments of Reunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana as they are integral parts of France. China includes the SARs of Hong Kong and Macao. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

November is Diabetes Awareness Month, in case you didn't know that already, and I'm going to give a plug to another website from the Greater Good Network, this time for their Diabetes Site.  When you get there, click on the box and let their advertisers pay for it, with the money going to fund diabetes research.  If a cure is found, animals will benefit just as humans will, except nobody ever had a human euthanized because he or she was diabetic.  Lives are at stake here.

And, check out their online store.  Part of every purchase goes to research, too.  I do a lot of my Christmas shopping through all of the Greater Good shops.

Related articles

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• Testing offered during Diabetes Awareness Month (timesrecordnews.com)

Worried about your dog's food? There's something you can do

Oreo on WNBC for Nutro Pet Food Recall (Photo credit: SheepGuardingLlama)

You may have noticed the link to the Animal Rescue Site on this page.  It's part of the Greater Good Network, which raises money for various good causes through advertising.  You click (it's FREE!) on the site, the next page comes up (a combination of ads and real content), the advertisers pay money for the pageview, and the site uses it to aid in animal rescue, in this case.

Well, if you're on their mailing list, they also send you information from time to time about issues connected to animals, and the one I just received is about the possibility that the Food and Drug Administration is proposing new pet food safety regulations, just as they do for human food.   It's about time, but it may not go through, thanks to lobbying efforts by manufacturers who don't want to deal with regulations.  You can send a message to the FDA commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, from the website to put pressure on so that this doesn't just fall by the wayside.

I'm doing it, and I hope you will, too.  If you have a diabetic pet, any contamination in his or her food could be very dangerous, and under the present system it could take months (and animal deaths) before anything is done about it, resulting in more deaths and illnesses.

Some Help for Grieving Pet Owners

Old Man Grieving - Vincent van Gogh
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Got an interesting email today from Petcentric about National Pet Memorial Day, which is the second Sunday in September (9-8 this year, so they should have sent the message sooner!).  I suppose that some people, even some pet owners, might think that this is somehow unnecessary, but I think I like the idea (not quite sure yet).  One thing that I have no doubt about is that anytime you lose a family member (and most pets count here, I would imagine), you will go through a grieving process.  When Tony died, I was pretty much devastated -- and I was shocked at that.  I never thought that I would take it that hard, or that there would be so many emotions involved, especially guilt.  He enriched my life so much more than I realized when he was still alive, and I think about him often, even now.

Anyway, the article offers some advice that might help you.  Check it out at http://petcentric.com/Inspiration/Articles/National-Pet-Memorial-Day-Helps-Grieving-Pet-Owners-Find-Closure.aspx?articleid=65672b87-4cc1-49dd-8db1-1cd2e02d9a5c&utm_campaign=always+on&utm_medium=email&utm_source=exacttarget_PPEA_092013_02&utm_content=corporate-petcentric-NL_Both

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• On Mourning the Death of a Pet (thereseborchardblog.com)
• Commemorate Your Pet on Pet Memorial Day (arlboston.org)

When to think about changing vets

cool dog (Photo credit: ּα)

There was an interesting article on PawNation yesterday, titled "5 Things your Vet Should Never Say to You."   Although the 5 things are pretty significant negatives, I often wonder why people will stick with vets they simply don't like (or whatever more or less serious feelings they have for their vet).  Would you keep your own doctor if you felt that way?  I think I've written before about this, a long time ago, because this happened to me.  The first vet I took Tony to was recommended by my brother in law, and her office was very close to home.  However, when she came into the examining room, Tony started to shake (he never did this again  -- the vets who saw him later often commented on how calm he was), and she seemed to take an instant dislike to him as well.  Now, it may just have been a bad day for her, but the impression I got was that she just didn't care for small dogs.  She failed my first test, in fact.  Every person I ever saw encounter my pal for the first time smiled right away, and most immediately began to go on about how cute he was.  I'm not saying she was evil or anything, but it just didn't seem . . . well, right.  I started to tense up myself.  And, we didn't go back.
At any rate, it's something to think about.  

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Stop the Begging, Already!

Yeah, it's Doc

 

In my last post (the one on vegetables as dog treats), I didn't have space to address the issue of dogs who beg at the table.  Sadly, I live with one of these (Doc, a 130 lb. Great Pyrenees), and his owner is dealing with the situation by taking his own meal away from the table a lot of the time.  Since he feeds Doc AT THE TABLE nightly and gives him anything left over from whatever he had for dinner, Doc is understandably confused when he is yelled at for begging at the table.  After years of trying to change this situation, I've had to give up (one of those times where you have to go along to get along), but for those of you who are in a position of authority when it comes to the dog in question (i.e., it's your dog, not someone else's), WebMD has some help to offer in a cleverly titled article, "How to Stop Your Dog from Begging at the Table." 

Tony didn't beg at the table, but that was probably because I didn't give him table scraps very often (and never during family mealtimes) and because I rarely eat at the table myself, not wanting to deal with Doc trying to get my food.  However, my father was prone to giving him the last bite of his dinner if Tony was around, which he often was, as you can imagine.  Once he was diagnosed with diabetes, I was able to convince Dad of the error of his ways, and that stopped.  Based on my experience with Tony, of the two solutions WebMD suggests -- controlling the dog's access to the table or teaching the dog to do something else -- I think I prefer the latter.  This is probably because I had great success teaching Tony to move off the street onto grass, then sit and stay, whenever a car was approaching during our walks (there are no sidewalks in our subdivision -- you have to walk in the street.  Yikes.).  I think I could have gotten him to lie on his bed at our mealtimes without too much trouble, but if you think that you might have some problems there, there are training tip links with the article, too.

Good luck, and remember, to a dog, a rub on the belly is often just as welcome as a treat in the belly.   

(Barely) Related articles

• Begging For Grades in College (atheistrev.com)
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Good Treats for Good Diabetic Dogs

Fruits and vegetables (Photo credit: nutrilover)

I've written before about my sometimes horrifying discoveries about treats and my diabetic dog, mainly instances where I discovered that I should have checked the ingredients (high-fructose corn syrup and other sugars turn up in a lot of commercial dog treats), but I haven't often touched on treats that are better for your pet.  Recently, DogChannel.com published an article on using vegetables as treats, and I think this is a godsend.  I know quite a few dog owners who routinely feed their pets whatever they themselves are having for dinner (see my next post for more on that!), which is especially bad in many cases because said dog owners are not consuming a healthful diet themselves.

With diabetes, the treat question is more complex anyway.  Starches and sugars, really anything with a high glycemic index, can cause blood sugars to rise (and fall, too, for those who still are producing some insulin themselves), a bad situation when it comes to maintaining good health.  So, low glycemic index vegetables can be a better choice, as long as you remember that these are TREATS, not meals, and keep the portions to an appropriate size.  The article covers this issue pretty well, although it doesn't take diabetes into account.  For example, DO NOT give a diabetic dog potatoes (and if you want to give sweet potatoes, keep the serving very small -- their impact on blood sugar is not terribly high like regular potatoes, but they do have an impact, after all).  Starchy vegetables raise blood sugar almost as much as sugars do.

Having said that, I can recommend the article, based on what I've learned over the years (keep in mind that I am not a vet, just a well-read dog lover).  I remember Tony going absolutely nuts over broccoli -- he liked it cooked but still a bit crunchy.

Let me know how it works out for you.

Related articles

• 'High-glycemic' foods tied to diabetes risk (healthnexercise.com)
• ''High-Glycemic'' Foods Tied to Diabetes Risk (nlm.nih.gov)
• 4 Diabetes Management Tips for Adults (epicahealth.com)
• Sugar Seen as Driver in Rise of Diabetes, Study Suggests (bloomberg.com)
• Wheat: savings up, sugar levels down (thehindu.com)

Puppy (and Dog) Pill Problems?

Picture credit DogChannel.com

Our friends at WebMD's Healthy Pets page have a newish article that every dog owner should read, "How to Give Medications to Dogs."  Believe it or not, many people give up on their dogs because of this very issue (or so I have been told by several vets and vet assistants).  In my case, I had a lot of problems in this area when it came to pills but, surprisingly, none at all when it came to injections.  Tony hated pills of any kind, and I was hard pressed to find new ways to get them into him.  His nose always told him when a pill was hiding in a bit of food, and the only solution was to put them in more and more exciting (i.e., normally forbidden) kinds of food.  This went on for a while until I discussed it with his vet, who told me that he was not getting any time-delayed pills and so I could crush them and add them to his nightly tablespoon of nonfat plain yogurt.  This worked great!

My brother Eric, who gave Tony to me, told me that I should have been sticking my fingers in Tony's mouth on a daily basis from the day he came to live with me in order to get him used to me doing that.  Unfortunately, he told me this three years too late.  By that time Tony had gotten pretty protective of his mouth, and even though his teeth were small, I was not eager enough to start putting my fingers in there.  Eric's a behavioral psychologist, and he has been known to get animals to do some pretty weird stuff on command, so I'm sure he's right about the mouth thing, and I KNOW that putting the pills in the mouth is the very best way to do it, but I started too late and was too chicken for that method.  My advice:  it's the same as Eric's.  When you get a new puppy, check its mouth out as often as possible.  It will probably pay off down the line.

The one quibble I have with WebMD's advice on injections is that two different vets told me NOT to use alcohol on Tony's skin before giving him his twice-daily insulin shots.  I really don't remember the reason they gave for this, but I do know that there was never a problem with his injection sites, no infections or even irritations.  So, as always, go by what your vet says (and if you don't like what the vet says, get a second opinion-- you'd do that for your own health, wouldn't you?).

Related articles

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• RSPCA reveals lack of puppy love - Confused.com (confused.com)
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Dog Flu and Harbor Seals

These Mature Harbor Seals on the beach are apparently healthy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One source I haven't mentioned before is Mypet.com, mostly because it's run by Merck, which is a major player in BigPharma, if you know what I mean.  The bottom line is that the site is there to sell you on their products, but that doesn't mean that they are automatically wrong, just that you have to consider their goals as well as your own.  So, keeping that in mind, I just got an email from them about dog flu (several viruses, including H3N8).  They want people to vaccinate their dogs against dog flu (which is not -- so far-- transferable to humans), and they have a point, especially if your dog comes into contact with other dogs, or if your dog has a chronic health issue (like diabetes, for example) that would make a bout of the flu more hazardous than it would be for a healthy dog.  Their dog flu page is very cute, with a puppet video.  However, if you want to know more, you have to leave the site for another Merck page.

Not surprisingly, WebMd has information on H3N8, which you may have heard referred to as bird flu.  Horses and seals are also susceptible to it, and it can kill.  A WebMd Health News article reports that "Over a four-month period beginning last September [2011], 162 harbor seals were found dead or dying along the coast of New England" from H3N8.  Makes you want to get your dog vaccinated, doesn't it?     

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