# Miles the diabetic V (Symptoms)



## Jrod (Dec 12, 2012)

Hello all,
I wanted to start a post about my boy Miles and his life as a diabetic. My goal today is to help others to identify sypmtoms of diabetes. They are actually the same for pets and humans.

My wife and I have had Miles since he was 7 weeks old. His temperment is a bit more mellow than most V's but he still has his moments. We had Miles for 8 months when we noticed the first warnings of his condition. 

SYMPTOMS
The first sign we saw was when he went pottie. Normally it takes him between 10 and 20 seconds to do so. It began to take him almost 2 minutes to complete this process. The next symptom we saw was a significant increase in his water consumption. He would drink about 4 cups of water a day and that doubled almost overnight. The last indication we saw was Miles started to looked unsually slim. He was losing weight despite eating 1 cup of food 3 times a day and had been gaining weight until this point. 

VET VISIT
We decided to take him into his vet and they ran some test on his urine, which at the time we thought all this was due to a urinary tract infection. The vet prescibed Miles some antibiotics and we returned home. The vet called the next day with the news, he said it was not a UTI and that the results had shown he may be diabetic. They wanted to run some blood test on Miles to verify. We took him back to get his blood work done and when the results came in we were very sad. 

DIAGNOSIS
Prior to owning Miles we had a cat that was our first pet together and she was epileptic. We had to give her medicine orally every 12 hours to help with her condition and she only lived for 5 years before we had to put her to rest. My wife could see the conflicted look on my face knowing I was thinking about giving him back to our breeder. After a couple of minutes of hard thinking I looked up, saw the look on her face, and knew, that no matter what I said he was going to remain a member of our family.

This scenario happend over a period of 4 days. Miles had been to the vet about 2 weeks prior to the first symptoms showing and his weight at that time was 56 lbs. After those few days Miles had lost 8 pounds and his rib cage was protruding heavily on his skin. He had also began to eat his food very aggresivley, which at the time we didn't know was another symptom because he always ate quickly.

DIABETES
The body can no longer produce insulin efficiently or at all. Once food is broken down into glucose it goes into the bloodstream for cells to consume as energy and use for growth. Insulin must be present for the cell to absorb the glucose. Without the presence of insulin the cells will not absorb the nutrients and discard it via urination. 

Patients who experience high blood glucose levels will have an increase in urination, water consumption and hunger. In short diabetes does not allow your body to absorb energy from food and you slowy starve. This happend to Miles right in front of us and was a heart breaking moment.

Sorry for the not so happy part of the story, but this is how Miles's symptoms presented themselves to us. I hope this will help others understand how diabetes works and if you see similar indications, please take your pet to a vet. More to follow later.

Jrod


----------



## Oscar-vizzle (Jul 7, 2014)

Thank you for the informative post. I hope raising awareness of the condition helps other people and their pets. Coming from a family of diabetics (type 1 and 2) I can appreciate your situation and worries. I'm glad you chose to keep Miles (he's a handsome boy)


----------



## mswhipple (Mar 7, 2011)

Jrod, I couldn't have written it any better myself. What you have described is exactly how it happened with my girl. It is sad that there is no cure, but good that it IS manageable.


----------



## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

Thank you for posting this topic.
We have so many hopes, and dreams for these little red dogs when we bring them home. I think its normal for our emotions to run the gamut, when first faced with that type of diagnosis.


----------



## mommaofalot (Apr 10, 2014)

Love the picture perfect description off a v and their owner ( should be said the other way around)... I will be praying for Miles


----------

