Our dog Wylie, (or Wylie-Coyote as my husband and I sometimes call her) is a six year old spayed spaniel/terrier cross. She was diagnosed with diabetes in August 1997, shortly after her fourth birthday. We were devastated. She was in intensive care at the vet clinic for a week, suffering from ketoacidosis, and we were told that she was really lucky to have survived. She came home on Iletin NPH insulin, and was regulated on 6.4 units twice daily.

I was new to the Internet, so I thought there must be something about pet diabetes on the web, and the first site I found was Kris’ Canine Diabetes page, and a link to the muffin e-mail list, which I subscribed to. Since then I have found lots of information and now belong to the pet-diabetes list as well. From all the reading I did on the Internet, my husband and I learned to do home testing with a glucometer, and this is how we manage Wylie’s diabetes. We do our curves at home, and consult with our vet when we think we need to make changes in Wylie’s dose. After a few ups and downs she is now regulated on Humulin N, 9 units in the morning and 10 units in the evening.

Wylie has two meals a day, we feed her VMD Medi-Cal Fiber Formula, which she does quite well on. She also has a mid-day snack which helps to level out her blood sugar. Wylie has always been an outside dog, and living on large acreage in central British Columbia, we enjoy a fairly long snowy winter. Our favorite activity that time of year is skiing, both cross-country and telemark. Wylie loves to join us and we sometimes can’t keep up to her! In the spring and summer we like to hike and if I’m not ready to go for a walk by mid-morning on my days home from work, Wylie doesn’t leave me alone until we go.

In the last year or so, we noticed Wylie was not seeing as well as she used to so we took her to a veterinary ophthalmologist - Dr. Lewis in Coquitlam, B.C. She was diagnosed with immature cataracts, and we made the decision to have them removed. It was a six-hour drive to the clinic from where we live, so we booked the operation for January 4, when we could both take a few days off to make the trip. The surgery went well, and she was fitted with lens implants. She was released from the hospital with a lovely plastic Elizabethan collar, and earned the nickname "cone-head". This took a bit of getting used to -- she hated it for the first day but quickly adapted. The collar stayed on for three weeks, a bit longer than usual but we have an 87 pound, almost two year old Ridgeback puppy, and didn’t want to risk any injury from too much wrestling.

I took a week off work to be with Wylie at home and my husband took her to work with him the rest of the time. We had to put Voltaren drops and Tobradex salve in her eyes three times a day - this was to be for about six weeks.

Our local "human" optometrist agreed to check Wylie’s pressure in her eyes with his tonometer, so we wouldn’t have to travel 300 miles on snowy roads for her one week checkup. Her pressure was a little high, so after conferring with Dr. Lewis, we put her on Neptazane. This lowered her pressure after a few days so she was taken off the drug. After three weeks at home, Wylie had a setback. Her eyes became irritated and she started to squint. Our local vet and optometrist examined her, found some inflammation and her pressure had become quite low. Suspecting uveitis, we called Dr. Lewis and he put her on Pred-forte. But we knew we wouldn’t rest until he saw her, so we headed for Coquitlam again. Wylie did have uveitis, and had some scar tissue from the inflammation, so we had to keep her on the Pred-forte.

At this time, a week later, she is still on the medication and will have to be weaned slowly from it. We will take her back for another checkup on February 11. Her sight is excellent - and she is again catching cookies in mid-air.

We can hardly wait until we get the go-ahead from Dr. Lewis to take Wylie for a cross-country ski!

Wylie is famous....You can read a newspaper article about Wylie, and an article about Wylie's eye exams. (neat pictures)

Contributed by Anne Blake - February 6, 1999.

Contributed February 1999
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