In general if a Labrador is diabetic and their condition is regulated and on insulin, how many years can they live please? I Googling and getting conflicting answers. Thank you
Hi there. I've no personal knowledge of canine diabetes, sorry! But... I do have a human child with type one diabetes. I'll share a little of what I know from that in case it's helpful. Human diabetes is rather different from canine - but I can tell you that in humans with type one diabetes (where no insulin is made by the pancreas), life expectancy is normal if you have *excellent* control of sugar levels. I can also testify that achieving that control is REALLY difficult.... we have all the best technology currently available, and a co-operative patient (mostly - he's a teenager so.... ), who understands his condition. It's still a constant daily fight to keep his sugar levels in a safe range. Dogs have a more predictable diet which I imagine will help.... but my understanding is that they are managed with just one or two injections of insulin a day (as opposed to my son who is microdosed every 5 minutes by amazing modern tech!). My assumption is that their life expectancy will depend massively on how well those daily doses are titrated against their food intake, exercise, and metabolism - which will depend on the dog, their appetite, their diet in general, how and how often you monitor their sugar etc. I believe long term outcomes for dogs with diabetes also depend on their breed, gender, age at diagnosis, the cause of the diabetes, and what co-existing conditions there are. Sorry I know this doesn't answer your question... but it may help explain why you aren't finding a nice straightforward consistent answer online!
Years ago our first Lab, Ginger became diabetic at 12 years old. We managed her with insulin and did blood sticks any time we thought she might be high or low. Because we control their diet, dogs are easier to control than humans. She was not a brittle diabetic and most of the time we could keep her in the 80-120 range, but occasionally she would get very low from too much exercise, and we would giver her Karo Syrup. IIRC we began mixing some fast and low acting insulin to keep her closer to the magic 100. After getting her stabilized initially we did all our own insulin adjustments. Note that dogs use the same insulin and test strips as humans, and the 100 goal is the same, but she could go much lower than most humans and still function. She lived until 16 and was very active until about 15. She even had LP surgery at 14 and came through just fine. The actually lived longer than any of our other Labs, or my Malamute. We did the blood sticks for testing on the inside of her lip, and she did not seem to mind. There aren't a lot of nerves there.
