Pet Discuss Tuesday – Pets and diabetes

Talking about diabetes is different in dogs than it is in cats. Dr. Lucas Kandefer says that understanding our cats is a little easier than understanding our dogs, as cats are a lot more like humans as they age. He says we’re talking about type 2 diabetes. This is usually a type of diabetes that is associated with a family history of diabetes, your weight, your diet, and all of those things when cats develop diabetes. He says a heavy cat is a warning sign to a veterinarian. This cat is at risk for diabetes and other diseases. Diabetes is really easy to manage when you are in control of your weight. He says that when they see cats gain weight year on year they speak very carefully with owners to make sure they understand that we are at risk of seeing problems.

Dogs are much more common in the type of diabetes they get. He says they are actually very similar to adolescent or type 1 diabetes. Dr. Essentially, Kandefer says that the two differences are that if a dog develops diabetes, it will be diabetic for life. Outside of Insulin There’s No Way To Cope With It In our cats, insulin is very important in regulating their form of diabetes, but with diet, with proper weight loss, and with proper insulin control, their cells can actually start making insulin again and they can go into remission. With the help of your veterinarian, you can manage your cat’s diabetes so that it no longer needs insulin in the future.

Dr. Kanderfer says that when you talk about both conditions, your cats and dogs, you have to use insulin to treat diabetes, and human insulin is widely used right now, so this can be a real battle for affordable insulin for your pets to find. He says your veterinarian is always trying to find a way to make sure you can do whatever makes it easiest for your pet and for you. Gunshots are very scary to many people when you talk about giving shots to your pets. Dr. Kandefer says that most of the time the injections for our cats and dogs are so small that it is very easy to give these injections, and often they don’t know. Dr. Kandefer says the good news is that controlling sugar at home isn’t that important. He says sometimes they have owners who check their blood sugar at home; This could be more daunting and nerve-wracking when trying to get a blood sample from your pet, but they have the same movement and food almost day in and day out, so they don’t always have to adjust their insulin like people do every day. He says that, on average, they can say you should need this much and they can regulate that and find a good level that will work for your pets. Dr. Kandefer says that hopefully your pet will never struggle with diabetes, but if it does, the good news is that it is a treatable condition and your veterinarian and staff will work very hard to make sure you are comfortable feel when you have to deal with your pets with this condition.

Click here for the Niagara Frontier Veterinary Society.