Diabetic Diets for Dogs

Video Transcript

"Let's talk about diets for diabetic dogs. Diabetes is very common in dogs. The symptoms are going to be drinking a lot, urinating a lot, eating more but yet losing weight. Those are typical symptoms. Your veterinarian can help you diagnose and treat your dog typically with insulin twice a day. Now diet becomes a very critical part of this because dogs who eat very low quality diets, lots of filler or high carb diets generally are going to be more difficult to regulate. And so the idea is to get a diabetic dog on a special diet and there are many companies that make a special diet that your veterinary clinic can help you decide which is the best and appropriate one for you. A diet such as this essentially is designed almost as a weight loss diet and so what happens is there is higher digestible fiber and low carbs and essentially what you're trying to do here is decrease that amount of carbohydrates which are going to turn into sugars and create more problems for the diabetic animal. So a lower calorie, lower card, higher fiber diet is essential to these diabetics. It's been shown also that dogs eat smaller meals several times a day generally do better but a lot of times it's easier to give insulin when you're only feeding them at the insulin time to make sure that they're eating before you give that insulin because that can lower their blood sugar if they're not feeling good and they're not eating and they still get their insulin. So check with your clinic, they can help you through that."