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Bentley the diabetic dog

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In November 2014, my boyfriend and I, on a whim, decided we wanted to get a dog. Although I wasn’t sure if it was the best time to add another member to our family, since we had just moved from a 2 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom apartment, i said, “why not?”!

We got our little Bentley boy on Thanksgiving day from a family in Desert Hot Springs, California. My boyfriend had found the ad for a Golden Retriever puppy on Craigslist for $400. If you have a Golden, you know that, that is a steal for a pup. My boyfriend had always wanted a Golden Retriever, and so we did it, we got a puppy! I’m not usually an impulsive person, but I had been wanting a dog for quite some time and so did he.

Even after all we’ve gone through with Bentley, I am so thankful for what he has brought into our lives, and I don’t regret any of it. We got Bentley when he was 7 weeks old, and naturally our next steps were, picking a vet, getting him vaccinated, and all the usual puppy obligations. I figured we probably would’t go and see a vet too often, so we just took him to the local vaccination clinic, which also was a vet just in case anything did come up. After taking him to the vaccination clinic every 3 weeks for his puppy shots, we were finally done and we didn’t have to worry about any more vet visits! Or so we thought….

In March, all of a sudden we noticed that Bentley had become really obsessed with drinking water and was peeing an abnormal amount. We thought because it was starting to get warmer in the desert that he was just more thirsty, and therefore by drinking more water, was peeing more. But then he peed on our bed, which was unlike him. At that point he was pretty much potty trained, and rarely had accidents in the house. The only times he would was when we had waited too long to take him out to potty. So him peeing all over the floor and our bed was really uncharacteristic of him. We figured he just had a UTI or something that we could give him an antibiotic to fix.

Of course I tried to do some research on what his symptoms could possibly be, and let me tell you, you find some scary stuff on the internet. I had seen that his symptoms could be diabetes, but it also said that dogs would be lethargic, have diarrhea, and would start to lose weight, and at that point, he didn’t have any of those symptoms. I had noticed that he was sleeping more the days leading up to our appointment, but I just figured that was from playing. He still had an appetite, and would have random bursts of energy, and he didn’t seem to be losing weight.

Then the morning of our appointment came and Bentley had slept the whole day before, and had not been himself that morning. We went to our initial appointment and explained all his symptoms and behaviors to the vet, and she mentioned it could be any number of things, i mean, he was a 6 month old puppy, it would be really strange if he had diabetes. They took a blood test, and they would get back to us the next couple days on the results. Of course, the rest of the day Bentley slept, and the next morning he was really not himself.

I got a call from the vet while I was at work, and Bentley did in fact have diabetes. Instantly my mind filled with worry. I had read how drastically people had to change their dog’s lifestyle, so then i just thought about how we have to buy special food, and take him on walks and do this, and do that. The lady on the other line told me she would call in his insulin prescription and schedule us to come in the next day to do an insulin injection training. I hadn’t processed everything yet, so i didn’t even think to ask about all the things that I had read that we had to change, but she didn’t mention anything about it, which at the time I thought was weird. Once I had processed some what, I called back and asked them my million questions, and it turns out, because Bentley was so young the only thing that had to change was giving him insulin, and everything else would stay the same. At that time in my mind, if I didn’t start doing everything RIGHT NOW then something drastic would happen. But the only person with that same mentality was me, everyone else I had talked to didn’t have that same worry. I think that I felt that way because I had finally seen it taking a toll on him, and I just wanted my little boy to feel better. When I came home that night, Bentley was in really good spirits and it definitely made me feel a little better.

The next day we went in for our insulin training because we would have to start giving Bentley 2 shots a day, every day from there on out. Of course my boyfriend isn’t the biggest fan of needles, so I was the one that took the reigns. Luckily with insulin you don’t have to give the shot in a weird place, you just bunch up skin on their upper back and poke them, they don’t even feel it. We were starting out with 7 units, which is a pretty low dose, but with insulin its safer to give them too less than too much. We scheduled an appointment to come back in 2 weeks later to do a glucose test to see if 7 units worked or if it needed to get bumped up.

So there we were 2 weeks later. Bentley had gotten tremendously better, he wasn’t as obsessed with water and wasn’t peeing as often as before, but he still wasn’t fully back to being a normal dog. They tested his glucose and it was still too high to keep him for a glucose curve test, so we upped his dosage to 8. This continued to happen for the next several months.

With a mix of busy schedules and a very busy vet clinic, here we are in the middle of July and Bentley is getting 12 units of insulin 2 times a day. He has gone from 35 pounds to 45 in the last month. Since last week he has gained 2 pounds. Since Bentley has been growing through out this process it has made it difficult to regulate his glucose numbers. They give us dosages based on weight, but when he continues to grow, its hard to give him the correct dosage.

Today at his appointment Dr. Kocian saw a sort of haze in his eyes, and is sending us to go see the doggy eye doctor. She is unsure if it is onset of cataracts or not, but its better to just have it looked it. Luckily the eye doctor she referred will be in the desert this coming week. Hopefully they will have an opening.

With Bentley being so young, our vet has never seen a dog of his age with diabetes, and has tried to help as much as she can, but has decided to send us to an internal medicine vet to continue with treatment.

Animal Samaritans has been a great place to bring Bentley to initially help us with figuring out his diabetes and I know they have done as much as they can to help, but I think with Bentley growing during this whole process it has made it difficult to regulate.

I have tried to look up as much information as possible on diabetes in young dogs, and there doesn’t seem to be that much information out there thats why I wanted to write this blog. I know we aren’t the only pet owners who have gone through this and I wanted to share the experience we’ve had.



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