As you know by now, I don't have experience with diabetes in dogs but I can give you some basic information on diabetes for starters.
I hope this isn't too much information, it got rather long.
First of all, diabetes is a marathon, not a sprint! You can't learn everything at once, it will take time and that's perfectly all right. You'll also make mistakes and sometimes diabetes will simply do things you can't explain, no matter how much you know. Mistakes aren't bad, they're learning opportunities, and everyone dealing with diabetes makes them.
So please don't panic and take your time!
Diabetes in a nutshell:
- To use glucose for energy we need insulin. In healthy animals, including humans, the body nicely produces just the amount of insulin needed for the glucose in our bodies. Insulin is the stuff that transports glucose from our blood into our body cells, crudely spoken.
- Glucose comes from 2 sources:
1. Food. All carbohydrates (carbs) turn to glucose. So not only sugary stuff but things like bread, pasta, rice, and dog food as well. Some protein does too (which is more relevant for dogs because they're carnivores).
2. The liver. Even without carbs in food the liver makes it's own glucose, for which insulin (be it our own or injected insulin) is needed.
In diabetes something went wrong: either not enough insulin is produced or the body doesn't use it's insulin in the right way, so the insulin produced isn't enough to use up the glucose in the blood.
Too much glucose in the bloodstream is what makes us ill so we need to get it down.
Because there were 2 sources of glucose in the blood we can work on both to help get it down.
1. Food. This is were
@xfieldok 's suggestion for raw food came from: All dog food has carbs which turn into glucose. Meat doesn't have carbs and it's a healthy food source for dogs.
2. The liver. Nothing to do about that one, so your dog will need injected insulin anyway to deal with this source of glucose. And also from the glucose formed from the protein in it's food.
The above is about how diabetes works. In real life it's more complicated than 'inject some insulin to cover the glucose' and be done with it.
The problem is that we need a certain amount of glucose in or blood to keep our brain functioning. Diabetes is a problem of too much glucose in the blood stream. But if we add insulin, too much of the glucose in our blood can be transported to the cells, leaving not enough to fuel our brain.
This is a hypo, or low blood sugar. It lead to confusion, problems with motor skills (wobbly uncertain walk, hitting the right key on your computer), sometimes sudden aggression, unconsciousness if it drops too much.
So we want to avoid both high blood glucose and low bg.
The only way to find out how much insulin is needed for an individual is trying and seeing what happens. I expect that's the 5 days the vet was talking about: finding the right dose for your dog.
BG isn't static, it can rise and fall quickly, even in a matter of minutes. A good thing when you're having a hypo: eating something with sugar quickly solves the problem!
You'll need to have something on hand to feed your dog if he's going low.
That's where the meter and test strips come in. If you use a glucose meter regularly you can keep an eye on how Buzz is doing on a daily base with his insulin dose
Twin will probably like fresh meat as well
