What if your diabetic dog is lost?

Space Canine Patrol Agents (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here's an issue I've hardly touched on, and I have to thank the ASPCA for making me think about it.  On the Fourth of July, I received an email from them with the headline "What to do if your pet is lost."  I remembered when that actually happened to me, with the added complication that my dog was on insulin. 

Tony liked to go off on his own, so we were always careful about closing doors and making sure he hadn't been digging under the backyard fence, but sometimes he just managed to slip out (little dogs can get through very small spaces).  When he was first diagnosed with diabetes and put on insulin, I worried about this, so I ordered him a new I.D. tag.  The front had his name, but underneath that it said "I have diabetes."  My name and phone were on the back.  I should point out that one of my worries with him getting loose was that the people who found him might want to keep him, since people went crazy over him every time I took him anywhere, so I had already had him microchipped.

Well, one night his new tag was tested.  It was about 10PM in early September, and my brother in law Steve wasn't paying attention when he went out to get something from his car.  Tony was off to the races.  We all went out and searched the neighborhood, without any luck.

You can imagine how happy we were when, right after we got back to the house, the phone rang (with good news).  It was a man who lived on the other side of the subdivision (I wish I could remember his name), and he had Tony.  Steve (who felt very guilty) volunteered to go get him.  It turned out that for some reason only a dog would understand, Tony had gone to the back door of that house and started barking.  The man opened the door to see what was going on, and Tony ran in, just as if he owned the place.  The man told Steve that he called as soon as he saw the tag that said Tony had diabetes.  So, not only did we get Tony back, but we didn't have to spend the whole night worrying, which had happened in the past.  And that was a real possibility, according to Steve, who said that when he got there, the children of the house were playing with Tony -- and they were not happy that he had to leave.  I can see someone waiting to call until morning, considering it was late.

My advice:  get the microchip, but be sure to put the diabetes on the dog's tag.  It's a little bit of insurance that might make a difference. 

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Blood Sugar Monitoring

Image via Wikipedia

Got an email the other day about monitoring a dog's blood sugar.  I've mentioned before that my brother Eric monitored his dog's blood sugar, while I didn't.  Tony had regular blood sugar curves done, and they were always consistent after the first couple of months.  Eric's dog Lucky (always a bad choice for a dog name), however, was almost always out of control in that area.  Eric had several things going for him that I didn't:  at the time, he himself was diabetic (he isn't anymore, thanks to some pretty serious lifestyle changes), so he was hyperaware of everything connected with that; Lucky was a BIG Labrador retriever, which made it easier to draw the tiny bit of blood needed for the test (trying to do this without help to a Pomeranian ain't easy; you can't ever get the right grip); and, Eric is a behavioral psychologist with tons of experience with animals and many medical procedures.
At any rate, if it had been necessary to test Tony's sugar, I would have found a method of getting the blood, and it would have become routine in a hurry-- that's just the way it is.  If your vet tells you to do this, DO IT.  Like giving the insulin injections, you'll get better with practice over time, and you'll definitely get better control over your dog's diabetes.  There's a veterinarian's discussion of this at Pet Place; it's a basic explanation that should give you enough information to ask your vet the right questions.

Incidentally, there's something new and exciting in the monitoring pipeline for humans, which should eventually work itself into veterinary applications.  See the article below.

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Wanna play a game?

This is just a quick post to let you know about the Nobelprize.org's The Diabetic Dog Game.  It's basically an online pet simulator, with a blood sugar monitoring bar so that you can keep track of the dog's levels.  If you have a child in the house, this would be a good way to help them understand what is going on with your dog.  I have found that it's hard to make people understand that they can't give Tony treats, and kids often think I'm just being mean.  Playing this game would give them an idea of what happens when you give a diabetic dog food he isn't supposed to have.  And, it's pretty darn cute.

A warning:  if you don't take good care of your diabetic dog, the game takes it away from you.

In case you're wondering what the Nobel Prize has to do with dogs, the answer is that the discoverer of insulin won the prize in 1923, and I guess that using a dog was to make it more appealing so kids would want to play (and not even notice that they are learning).  It would also be good for parents to use to impress upon kids that adopting a dog is a very serious responsibility.