What we learned at the vet..

1. You don't need to give exactly the same dose every time you give your pet insulin. I've read many places that so-called micro adjusting is stressful on the dog - but that can't be any farther from the truth. The truth is: 'micro adjusting' is just adjusting for the glucose needs at that given time. It's what our freakin' pancreas(es?) do, for goodness sake! Does my pancreas ALWAYS give the equivalent of 5 units everyday at 8pm? Heck no! It adjusts based on my sugar needs - so should the insulin we give our best friends.

2.  Buzz is a very, very good dog! I can't for the life of me understand why he was a stray for the first 4 years of his life. He's not aggressive (well, except for when I cut his nails - but that's another story for another day), he's not mean, he's not loud, he's not anything that's associated with a 'bad dog' (but is there ever really a bad dog? or just bad owners? hmm..). He was in the doggie hospital for 36 hours and he let them poke him until they were blue in the face without as much as a squeal. And he's healthy, which means he's actually able to put up a fight - unlike the last time he was in the doggie hospital.

3. Buzz weighs 19 pounds (or 8.7 kg - it took me an entire day to convert this... and I'm in the science field. Mostly because I was too lazy to look up the conversion factor). He got his vaccines last month at our regular vet and he weighed 18 pounds. He got out of the hospital in December and weighed ~16 pounds. So on average, he is gaining a pound a month. This means (hopefully) that in 2 months, he will be at his ideal weight (yay!). He is NOT going to be happy when we decrease the amount of food he gets, but he'll get over it (by increasing the amount of poop he eats - just kidding, hopefully).

4. Our vet has 2 diabetic dogs (including Buzz) and 1 diabetic cat. The other diabetic dog apparently is a jet setter and splits his time between Kentucky and Florida (that lucky dog) and was visiting the doggie hospital to get regulated at the same time Buzz was in. I'm sure they became friends. ;)

5. We've paid for more than 3 computers at our vets office. They have really high-tech, slim-line, easy-on-the-eyes computers that are really expensive. And after this hospital trip, the hubby realized we've probably paid for more than 3 of them. Ouch.

6. The vet isn't worried about those high numbers we're seeing when we are about to give Buzz his insulin injection. We thought to be a regulated dog, Buzz's glucose numbers needed to be between 200 and 300 AT ALL TIMES. That isn't so, says our vet. The 500s and 600s are just letting us know it's time to give insulin - not necessarily that he isn't regulated.

7. The random numbers we were getting (some days, his sugar first thing in the AM was in the 100s, some days it was in the 600s) could be due to the insulin lasting longer than the normal 12 hour duration. We are trying a new schedule with giving less in the morning than we do at night - there are all sorts of reasons why our vet wanted to do LESS in the morning (I couldn't understand - why would you give LESS in the morning, when he eats more in the AM and his insulin is working properly in the AM as seen by my wonderful at-home glucose curves and then MORE at night? But there are reasons, young readers, beyond your wildest imagination..... not really) and if you are interested, I can give you the deets - you know, the details.

8. Regulating diabetes is like playing the lottery. You have to be really lucky to get the numbers right. :)

And I leave with you with a picture of what Buzz has been doing since he's been home....

Ok, maybe not so much that as this...