Pets with Diabetes: Sunny Bear's Story

We live in Alaska, and have a 9 year-old male Rottweiller named Sunny Bear. He is our sunshine, and our very good friend. He is gentle giant, even though he weighs 146 pounds. He recently was diagnosed with diabetes insipidus.

We have a very fixed income and were very afraid we might not be able to afford the medicine that he requires. The medicine cost $154.00 for a 5-ml bottle, and sometimes he takes twice that amount in a month. Putting our sunshine and our friend to sleep was not even an option, but I was at a great loss as where to go for help. I looked up the company that makes the medicine and asked many questions as to where what how, we could find help, and it paid off. The sales representative was also a pet owner and understood about the cost of the medicine. I found that this medicine is only available as a prescription for humans, and I thought that was strange. I talked with our local pharmacy and learned that they compound different medicines all the time and could compound Sunny Bear's medicine for us. Now instead of the medicine costing us $154.00 a month, we now get the same medicine for $40.00 a month. We can fit that into our budget and Sunny Bear can have his needed medicine.

I hope my sharing our story will help other pet owners. Always remember to never give up on the ones you love.

-- Contributed by Rick Handel

	Sunny Bear's Story