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!
