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diabetes insipidus

19 16:45:09

Question
QUESTION: My dog has been diagnosed with diabetes . I give .1mg desmopressin tablet 2x a day. His behavior is very strange. If he is lying down he jumps up all of a sudden and twirls around like something has suddenly stung him.When he sits, I see his body shaking. He chews his paws fist thing in the morning, and off and on during the morning. Once he let out a loud yelp. I checked him and could find nothing, no blood, nothing out of the ordinary. I tried giving him just.1mg once a day, but that did not control his water intake or urinating. I've taken him to the vet who cant find anything wrong. Do you think I should have a blood test to check his kidneys.

ANSWER: I'm assuming your vet did a full blood panel?  This is certainly not normal behavior and it's possible it's a side effect of the meds.  Would you consider getting a 2nd opinion?
Is his appetite okay?  Activity level normal?

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Yes a full blood panel was done. So was a urine culture and a urinalysis. His appetite is good, but his activity level is not normal. We used to walk 2 miles 3x a week with no problem. Now he's panting at a mile. I took him to the U of Penn but my head was spinning at the list of possibilities. When he was admininstered the desmopressin by his vet here in Delaware, his urine color was yellow again, so the vet said it was DI.
His kidney results were within normal range. Everything was within normal range except his unrine which was 00011.

ANSWER: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_in_dogs

Read the above and we'll talk.  I'm suspicious of your vet's diagnosis since his glucose levels would be high if he had diabetes.  And oral meds do NOT work if he does have it. Dogs need insulin injections.

When you took the urine, was it a first morning sample?  To use color of urine to determine diabetes is just simply incompetent.  I really think you need a 2nd opinion.  Take all test results with you.

You can also buy some glucose strips at the drugstore and test yourself.  You just collect a urine sample, dip the strip in it and read it.

When you say his urine was ooo11...are you talking ph levels?

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: My dog has been diagnosed with Diabetes Insipidus, not Diabetes Metillus. His sugar level was fine, his kidney level was normal. His specific gravity was 100011.

Answer
I understand that, Deirdre.  Did you get the info I sent on the medication?

A blood test or a urinalysis is no more than "a snapshot in time" and it's always, always advisable to retest before treating anything serious.  I'm still advising a 2nd opinion.

I did ask if the urine was a first morning sample with dog fasted?  If not, this can skew the results quite a bit.