Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Blind Sophie, our newly diagnosed diabetic, was one of the dogs I took to Burlington last week along with Darla. In the photo above is our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Marielle Goossens, examining Sophie. Under Marielle's direction, we started Sophie on insulin injections and have been carefully increasing her dose, bit by bit, to try and get her regulated and stable. The trick is finding just the right dose to keep the blood glucose within a stable range. Alayne and I have been checking her blood glucose levels repeatedly. We ran the last 24-hour "curve" — or series of tests — starting at 8 a.m. Monday morning and checking every two hours, including a 2 a.m. test overnight and concluding yesterday morning at 8 a.m.

I emailed the full results of this curve to Marielle yesterday. When she called me yesterday evening to discuss the findings, she sighed and said, "Sophie hasn't read the literature." That's because Sophie's not responding normally to the insulin, and her results just don't make sense. For example, on Monday morning her blood glucose dropped a pretty dramatic 200 points within two hours after her morning injection, then climbed a bit before dropping back again. But following her evening injection, she actually went up 100 points within two hours and climbed throughout the night, topping out at a startling 503 at 8 a.m. yesterday morning. That's just not supposed to happen. (Normal blood glucose range is generally considered between 75-120 mg/Dl.)  We're making sure she isn't sneaking any extra snacks that could throw off her values, and we're testing her urine as well, which confirms our blood glucose monitor's findings.

Sophie's been "off" since we started — even the emergency clinic on New Year's Day was surprised at how she responded to their initial insulin injection. One reason for last week's visit with Marielle was to run some other tests to see if there was something simple that could explain why she wasn't responding like she should. But the tests all came back negative. 

After looking at the results from our last curve yesterday, Marielle has called a veterinary endocrinologist at UC-Davis she worked with in the past to see if he has any recommendations. We're just waiting to hear. One thing she's already planning to do is change the type of insulin and see if this generates a different response.

Oddly, despite these blood glucose values and the variations we're seeing, Sophie is acting just fine, thank you very much. Good energy, great appetite, full of her usual zest. "Problem? What problem?," she would ask.

As in:

(Looks like she capsized her "boat," doesn't it?)

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