Diabetic Dogs in a Winter Wonderland

English: Two Siberian Huskies (Max & Moritz)
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I hope your holidays are going well so far.  I just received an email from WebMd's Healthy Dogs newsletter and was appalled to find that the article links don't seem to be working.  Since others may be having the same problem (and since the search program on WebMd seems to have trouble finding pet articles, too), I thought it would be worth posting how to get to them.

The first article is on frostbite in dogs, and I found this a real eye-opener, as I never thought about it before.  I mean, the dogs I've spent the most time with throughout my life have all been breeds (Pomeranians, Great Pyrenees, Siberian huskies, etc) that originated in cold climates, and you just don't imagine them having too many problems in the winter.  In fact, I've always had more of a problem getting the dogs to come back indoors in the winter.  It turns out that cold weather is especially hazardous for diabetic dogs, because "Prolonged cold exposure burns up stored energy and results in a low blood sugar."  Their instructions on emergency care for dogs suffering from hypothermia include giving honey or sugar water as part of the treatment.  Good to know!

The article on winter safety in general is also a good read, if only to refresh your memory, but it brings up a few things, for example, the hazards of doggie sweaters (!), that may not have occurred to you.

Finally, one of the things I found on my own turned out to be another good source:  the vet blogs at WebMd-- I didn't know they had these, but I should have guessed that they would.  There's a post from a vet in New York about winter paw care, and much more.

That's all for now.  Best wishes for a happy -- and healthy-- new year!
 

Related articles

• Beat the Winter Blues with Your Dog (petcarerx.com)
• Beat Your Pet's Arthritis This Winter (petcarerx.com)
• Game of Thrones inspired Huskie craze goes cold as owners give up on dogs (independent.co.uk)
• Great Pyrenees pup helps committee lobbying for dog park in Bethel (bangordailynews.com)
• Siberian Husky stolen outside bar in North Portland (kgw.com)
• Diabetes Dogs: K9 Insulin Monitors (wwlp.com)

A High-Risk Breed



Hans on St. Vrain Trail, Colorado. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just received the WebMD Healthy Dogs newsletter, and there is an item of particular interest.  They have a slideshow of the health issues associated with the 25 most popular breeds.  According to them, the Miniature Schnauzer is prone to diabetes (the problem they cite for Pomeranians is hair loss, which my Tony did not experience until his cancer was very advanced).  At any rate, if you have a Miniature Schnauzer, keep an eye out for symptoms like excessive drinking and urination, and make sure he or she eats right and gets plenty of exercise.  Of course, that's good advice for any breed!
I've got a couple of videos listed below with these very cute dogs performing tricks, and the first thing that struck me when I saw them was the rewards they received.  I hope the humans are keeping track of how many treats they're getting.

Related articles

• Puppy Love (happinuss.wordpress.com)
• My pets helped a ton.... (mycerebellarstrokerecovery.com)
• Miniature Schnauzers- Things you should know
• Dog Tricks
• Synchronized Dog Tricks

Welcome, folks!

If you're here, you probably have a diabetic dog, or you know somebody who has one. I hope that we can help each other deal with the many problems that arise in a situation like this. This is my story:

My friend Tony was born on 11/7/96 and enjoyed fairly good health (he did have an ongoing weight problem and low thyroid) until January of 2006, although I didn't recognize that anything had changed for a couple of months after that. It started with a few small things. He wanted to go outside in the middle of the night a couple of times a week, which was unusual for him, but not unusual enough that I worried about it. Over the next few weeks, the nighttime visits to the backyard became the norm, and I was going to work on 4 or 5 hours sleep. Sleep deprivation is my only explanation for why this went on so long.

In early March, my brother came down from Minnesota for a visit, and one evening we were about to have dinner when Tony came up to me, made sure I was paying attention, and urinated on the carpet. I couldn't write this off to excitement, either, because he has always been the most thoroughly housebroken dog I've ever encountered. If a nine-year-old dog hasn't had an accident in the house since he was a puppy, you know something is wrong when he does.

For the next couple of days I watched him constantly, and now I saw what I had missed. He was drinking a lot more water in the evening, starting about an hour after he ate and continuing even when we went to bed. I suddenly realized that I had been filling the little water bowl in the bedroom almost every day (the big water bowl in the kitchen was also used by 2 very large dogs in addition to Tony, and I couldn't tell that anything had changed there). Well, I had a pretty good idea what this meant. My parents and two of my siblings are diabetic, so I called the vet and made an appointment. I was not surprised when she confirmed my layman's diagnosis, but I was shocked to discover that Tony had lost nearly a third of his body weight -- and I hadn't noticed!

Tony started out on 4 units of Vetsulin once a day; now, three years later, he gets two shots a day, 3 units each. His diabetes has generally been under good control, but he's also been having some of the health problems that often occur in diabetics. I'll talk about that next time.