Monitoring your diabetic dog

Changes in insulin requirements

It is not unusual for your dog’s insulin requirements to change even after a long period of stability. This is most commonly due to:

• weight loss or gain

• changes in exercise regime

• the presence of other diseases

• progesterone in unspayed female dogs. See Spaying diabetic female dogs.

• other treatments

It is important to continue to monitor your diabetic dog's progress - even after months or years of treatment - and consult your veterinarian if there are sudden changes or if anything unusual happens.

Testing urine and blood samples

You may be asked by your veterinary surgeon to regularly check the glucose (and ketone) concentrations in urine and/or blood samples. This gives an indication of how your dog is doing. Based on these results your veterinarian might decide to do a serial blood glucose curve to determine a new insulin dosage.

You should not change the dose of insulin without first consulting your veterinarian.

• Collecting and testing a urine sample
• Collecting and testing a blood sample