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Reply To: Diabetic dog won't gain weight

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Kellye P
Member

Thanks for the response. He gets the Fructosamine test every six months. He is always in the proper range. He is due to get tested again in October so I will have new numbers, but nothing has changed. He does not drink a lot of water or have any other symptoms of high glucose.

Last year I had the complete thyroid panel done – every single test. I thought maybe he was too high. He takes .1 mg of thyroxine twice a day. I was hoping that was the problem but all the tests came back normal. My vet is very particular with the timing so I’m sure she had me in the office 4 hours after he took his pill.

He is so tiny and cannot eat much at one time. I feed him exactly twelve hours apart but give him a little bit of food around noon and he gets a small snack at night. If he eats more than his usual amount, he throws up. His tiny stomach can’t hold more than half a cup.

I exercise him 30 minutes a day. He’s blind but can fetch in the house and will trot behind me on our very long driveway. The TCM vet does chiropractic adjustments and says his muscles are in pretty good shape. We walk uphill and he goes up our stairs.

A specialist in this area also treats him and consults with my vet. He suggested that we stop insulin for three days to reset him and then start up again. During the days he was not getting insulin, his glucose levels were right around 250. However, his urine test showed ketones. The specialist said that did not make sense. My vet said she probably would have taken him off insulin if he stayed at 250 without it. The ketones messed up that plan, though. Nobody has any explanation as to why he had ketones. I think that is the key to the weight problem but I have no idea what it means.

I have taken him to a vet school and many other specialists. He is a medical mystery. The good news is that he is quite content and if he knew how much time I spent trying to figure out why he won’t gain weight, he’d probably think I was crazy!