Pets with Diabetes: Tizer's Story

I have an eight year old Finnish Spitz called Tizer who was diagnosed with Diabetes in June 2000. Tizer also suffers from epilepsy and slight liver damage. He was taken to the vet's just for a check up as he had started to drink a bit more than usual. I was completely shocked when my vet told me that he had diabetes as apart from the increase in drinking there had been no others signs like weight loss etc.

Tizer was taken in the next day to start his treatment and came home within a couple of days and then the fun began. He came home on 10 units once a day with a little chart on how to measure his urine and how to increase and decrease the insulin using the urine readings. Within no time he was on a very high dose (over 30 units) and the urine readings were still going off the sticks. We then tried injecting him twice a day starting on 20 units 7.30am and the same 12 hours later. This started to work and at last we were seeing him start to get stabilized.

Tizer's sugar can be very erratic, it can be high for a few days and then go low showing no sugar for days and this is happening at the moment. About 10 days ago Tizer was having 24 units twice a day and now he is on 16 units twice a day with still no sugar showing. I have spoke to my vet today who has advised me to keep on 16 units for 1 more day, then go down to 15 units for a couple of days and if no change to take him in to test his blood as in every other way he is looking healthy and showing no other signs.

Diabetes is a disease that you learn more and more as you go along but you still find that you always have lots of questions that you need answers to but you feel that you bombard the vets every time you go. Do other people find that their pet's sugar go high and low quite often, do they change their pet's insulin requirements according to the urine testing or do they stick to the one dose. It would be nice to hear from anyone with these sort of problems and to share experiences. Although it has been worrying and the injections took some getting used to and we plan our lifves around Tizer's routine I would not swap him for the world.

-- Contributed by Laura

	Tizer's Story