There is a New A1C Test for Diabetic Pets

Thank You Dr. Joi, for this very informative article! Great news on the A1C test but I am glad you have clarified here and in your practice, for pet owners how important it is to own their own glucose meter and strips and be able to test as needed and run a curve at home. It can save your pets life! You are amazingly knowledgeable on the subject of pet diabetes and this is critical for a veterinarian. Not all are unfortunately. Some mainly focus on making money through routine spay/neutering, annual vaccinations and preventative care and the pushing of overpriced flea and tick products and prescription foods with whichever company pays the most to peddle their wares.

I wish I had had the fortune the read an article such as this and others, such as one about the trial drug Kinostat (an eye drop for canines that prevents cataract formation in newly diagnosed (from date of diagnosis to 6 months) diabetic canines) which at the time was running a trial that my beloved boy would have been eligible for admission to. It only works before the formation of cataracts to prevent their formation. Once formed, it is ineffective in their removal.

My vet never advised me that there was a chance my dog could go blind from his diabetes. The fact is 60 % or more of all dogs diagnosed will form diabetes induced cataracts within 6 months, blinding them completely. When I asked her about it, she said she knew about cataracts but did not know about Kinostat. I found it with a simple Google search, but not until my dog was blind. To me this is inexcusable. She should have had this knowlege and shared it with me. My dog would not have gone blind. Worse, she first misdiagnosed him with “heart failure” when he was diabetic to the point he nearly died and had to be hospitalized for a week because he was severely ketotonic. She mistook a cough he had which was unrelated as fluid in his chest from heart failure because she heard a heart murmer she had “never heard” and he never had prior. But in his records he had always had a heart murmur. He had it when I adopted him 7 yrs prior and our emergency vet also faxed her specifically a year prior diagnosing it along with the emergency visit he had for pancreatitis. She missed it in his records because she never looked.

For a week he took meds to drain fluid around the heart and was given unnecessary tests. And for a week he declined terribly in health. Finally I took him to the ER vet who immediately diagnosed him with diabetes. They were shocked. I bought everything, an alphatrak 2 meter, all the strips, the whole kit (and of course through that same vet who offered me no discount!) She never even apologized for the misdiagnosis! I learned how to do a curve and faithfully kept a diary of his glucose readings. I bought keto strips to have on hand to test his urine and made ice cubes of maple syrup to have just in case of an emergency. He drank and peed all the time and his eating habits changed dramatically.

My normally ravenous dog became finicky. He was already on prescription hydrolyzed food and treats because of his pancreatitis so it was difficult to keep him regulated and his insulin dose was often changed. I mostly dealt with the ER doctor by phone regarding this because I did not trust the vet by now. We went through 2 years like this, up and down, up and down….he was never truly regulated, he adapted to being blind pretty quickly and it did not seem to effect his quality of life. He had 2 brothers who helped a lot. But the irregularity did effect him greatly and his pancreatitis came back. He began to also get abcesses. One had to be surgically drained in his back. Finally he had a pancreatitis attack that led to him being ketatonic and 2 weeks of hospitalization. They could not regulate him. My beautiful boy had to come home only to be euthanized the following day by a hospice vet.

I don’t know how on earth I ever would have cared for him without my Aphatrak 2 meter and strips. It would not have been possible. I realize I had an extremely unusual case but still, it is SO SO SO important to know where your dog or cats glucose numbers are ..at all times. Or you are gambling with their lives when injecting insulin. I think for some pet owners, their pets are just a possession. It is unfortunate but true. This is why our shelters contain so many older pets…abandoned by their families when they become older and sick and need expensive veterinary care or will soon need to be euthanized. Some people just don’t want or aren’t willing to deal with the financial burden. Then there are people like me, completely broke, who would sell everything I own and sleep in a tent, to make sure my pets get the medical care they need and deserve. I gave up my new car that was under contract and waiting to be picked up the day my diabetic dog needed to be hospitalized…I used the down payment for his care…and still ended up owing twice the amount.

You can get the meters…and the strips…on Amazon for much less than anywhere else. Also, the strips that are made for people by the same company as the Alphatrak 2 (they are called FreeStyle Lite) are literally 1/4 of the price and they are the EXACT SAME STRIPS. I read this online and decided to test it out so ordered a small amt. Tested both strips 5 times…both with test fluid and with blood and got the same result on each strip. So they are just putting a different label on them and jacking up the price for dogs and cats!

Anyway, Thank You for spreading your knowledge on this subject, from someone who went through the most awful pet diabetes experience and wishes her vet had been like you. BTW, I no longer go to that vet…another Doctor there also misdiagnosed my other dog…he had a small tumor on the tip of his docked tail, we brought him in to have it examined for removal and a biopsy was done. I still have the email report showing it as a benign growth that does not need to be removed unless it becomes too large or oozing and unsightly. A year later he was limping and we brought him back. The “benign growth” on his tail had spread internally to the size of a football inside his entire pelvic area. Too large for surgical removal.

We took him to a new vet who removed the tail growth and correctly diagnosed him. Squamous Cell Carcinoma. 2 months of Chemotherapy and Radiation at the Veterinary Cancer Center. A catheter sewn in so I could drain his bladder 4 times a day bc the tumor blocked his ureter. Then he died unexpectedly in my arms on a Saturday morning as we tried to rush him to the vet. He was 9. They were both 9. Which left only our puppy who was by then 2. Even he was not unmarred by that vet. He had to have 2 cherry eye surgeries (on the same eye) at our new vet to repair the damage done by that old vet in a botched cherry eye repair that was done during his neutering surgery. It popped out within days and caused terrible scar tissue. They refused to fix or redo it without payment. Then the notated in our account that I caused the damage myself by pulling on the stitches because I mistook them for a hair! We had 2 vet tech there that we loved who were so good to our dogs. Both left that practice because of the things they saw. One works at our new vet and one at the Cancer Center where we took our other dog!