Most decisions about diabetes treatment don’t need to be made immediately (except in life-threatening emergencies like diabetic ketoacidosis). Take time to understand your options and what will work best for you and your dog.
You may have found your way here because your veterinarian has just told you that your dog has diabetes. It’s common to be given a lot of information all at once about a disease you may not know all that much about, and it can definitely feel overwhelming! This page is here as a reminder to pause and breathe for a few minutes. Dogs are diagnosed with diabetes every day, and with the right support we can usually find practical ways to manage the condition and keep them living well if that is the path you choose.
One of the hardest decisions you are going to face early on is whether to treat your dog’s diabetes or choose euthanasia to prevent suffering. Diabetes is not a condition that can be left unmanaged — without treatment, your dog will continue to become more unwell each day and may develop sudden, life-threatening complications such as diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). In fact, around 40–60% of dogs are first diagnosed with diabetes when they present with DKA.
If you have previous knowledge or experience with diabetes in people, please don’t panic! Management in dogs is usually much easier because we’re much less worried about keeping very tight control over their blood sugar levels. Dogs have slightly different biology than humans and tend not to develop the same serious long-term complications from diabetes. This is partly because we’re usually managing the condition for just a few years, whereas people often live with diabetes for decades giving more time for smaller issues to build up into bigger problems.
If this is your first time dealing with diabetes, you probably have a lot of good questions that need good answers to help you make the best decisions for your dog’s care. What exactly is diabetes? What can be done to treat it? How will this affect my dog’s quality of life? Will I be able to manage the lifestyle changes that come with it? What are my options if I am struggling to cope?
The short answer to all those questions is that managing a complex, chronic condition like diabetes will come with additional costs and challenges and it will change the level of care your dog needs on a day-to-day basis. But with the right support, knowledge, and routines in place, diabetic dogs can easily go on to live happy, full lives — and so can their humans.
2. What is Diabetes?
Helping people understand animals and each other