Canine Diabetes

[Kmh1]

Blue, my 8 1/2 yr old ACD was diagnosed this weekend with severe diabetes. My vet kept him over the weekend to stabilize him and he will probably be home in another day or so.
He will need daily insulin shots etc. I'm a little nervous since I never dealt with anything like this before. The vet said the condition is very manageable. Has anyone dealt with this long term?--and how long have some dogs lived with this condition? Are certain breeds more prone to this? Thanks for any info or advice!

[SummerRiot]

We see a LOT of cases of this at work. Mostly from obese dogs, though we do have some cases that are average weight. I haven't seen a "young" case come in yet, so its mostly in older pets. We had a 17yr old cat with diabetes, we've had 13yr old dogs-15yr old dogs with diabetes.
As long as you work with your vet to keep Blue stabalized he should live a nice, full, long life! :)

[Kmh1]

Thanks SummerRiot. I'm going to try very hard to manage this well. Thank goodness Blue has never been really overweight--in fact when he was a young dog he was tough to keep weight on. His last check up was about 6 weeks ago for basic shots and the vet said he could lose 3 or 4 pounds, but was basically fine--but then he started losing weight and muscle--at first I thought it was normal aging, but then it got more severe and he went off his food etc, so off to the vet we went--and it was a good thing I did, because his glucose was sky high. The vet said with older pets this can sometimes come on quickly.