Molly is a Golden Retriever who is the sweetest dog but has also had a lot of medical issues over the years. We have been fortunate to have been chosen by her as her family. The day I met the breeder she had two females left and another lady claimed one. I picked up Molly and she buried her face in my chest and picked me. Two weeks after we picked her up the medical issues started.

I thought it was important to share our journey and perhaps it will help someone else. I’m going to give some of the more “need to know” information at the top so you don’t have to read it all if you don’t want to. Molly is a 10 year old Golden Retriever and her medical history is important because she has had multiples significant issues including skin infections, cancer removed from her neck, part of her bladder removed, an autoimmune condition called “Extra Oscular Myositis” and some other things. Needless to say, we have invested heavily in her and we would do it again in a heartbeat and that’s why I get so worked up in regards to the vets. I see it similarly to the way I saw a lot of people when it came to COVID–they acted like they had all the answers when they really had none.

Diabetes Diagnosis May 2026

We were started on 15U of Humulin and after doing curves every two weeks we were up to 21U before we were seeing any significant improvement. We are currently back down to 16U and would have killed our dog had we listened to the vets. We are currently at this level for a few days as we’ve seen her sugar drop significantly after 4-6 doses and we have had to skip doses. It appears to be stacking. In other words, the dose is lasting longer than 12 hours and after a few doses it starts to accumulate in her system. This can cause a dangerous situation with her glucose going too low, risking hypoglycemia.

We are trying to find that happy level that works around the clock but we may end up on a sliding protocol or stepped dosage where we give one dose in the morning and a different dose in the evening. I feel like there are probably many dog owners that lose their fur babies early because they think they are sick and it’s just that time when the vet is probably killing their dog with their poor instructions and the owner has no clue. I don’t know about the blindness but that comes from excessively high sugar levels so I think that is also poor management, although I know some dogs are very difficult to regulate. One vet kept saying she was a “complicated case” which I finally determined meant, “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

In short, the things I have problems with the vets are:

Conflicting information across vets in the same practice, conflicting information between vets in that office and at the hospital, and conflicting information from the same vet from one visit to the next. There different practices.
Molly was given a prescription for Humulin which is about $50. NONE of the vets told us you can get Novolin at Walmart for $25 and it’s the same formulation made by a different manufacturer.
I feel like we were flat lied to and information not shared.
Flat out bad information that could have killed our dog.

Getting Her to Eat

She went from 78 to 63 lbs in a matter of a few weeks. We spent every feeding with her laying on the floor because she was too weak to stand, us sitting on the cold hard tile, getting her to lick spoons of canned pumpkin and tossing kibbles to her one at a time to make it a game so she would chase them and eat a few bites. We had to figure out that she was not eating because she was too weak to stand and we had to make her lay down. We did this next to her bowls so she would feel comfortable. One of the useful things we learned from the vet is they can do acupuncture on the top of their nose at the hair line and it will make them hungry. They did it and she turned around and started eating. You can also massage that area to make them hungry. I will say that nursing her back to health was one of the most difficult and stressful things I’ve ever done. It made me feel better as a human to see her healthy again than anything I’ve ever accomplished. It made me relive the feeling when on of my infant children would get sick. They can’t talk or communicate to you what is wrong, but they look at you with those eyes and all you can see is pure love and trust that you are going to take care of them and make them all better again. Looking into her eyes when she was sick and I was doing things for her was like staring into space. Not because there was nothing there, the depth of that love went to infinity.

We were so desperate they gave us a prescription for Entyce which is a medication that mimics the hormone that makes them feel hunger. We used Entyce only when we absolutely had to because it’s expensive and I didn’t want her relying on it. We also did short walks before feeding but we live in SW Florida and it’s HOT here right now so they were VERY short walks. In many cases it was like if we could get her to start eating, she would finish it, but getting her started was the key. Our plan was to work up to larger meals and as that happens her appetite would return and increase over time and it did. We went from her only getting 100-150 calories to 600-700 calories 2x/day but it took about 4-6 weeks to get there after the horrid hospital stay. One of the things that she loved and it helped her get on a really good path was putting a spoonful of low-fat cottage cheese on top. We did use some eggs sometimes but tried to avoid giving her too much of that an cottage cheese given the fat content and that her pancrease was inflamed and we did not want to go backwards.

Now at each feeding she gets:

1 1/2 cups Zignature Whitefish Dry Kibble (low glycemic)
1 boiled chicken tender finely chopped and mixed with the kibble (we learned if we didn’t finely dice the chicken she at the large chunks and left about half the kibble)
Tablespoon of low-fat cottage cheese (must be low-fat)
Tablespoon of canned pumpkin
1/4 cup of frozen chopped green beans
1/3 can of sardines in water

Sounds yummy!!! She scarfs all of this up like a hungry wolf at almost every feeding. We are 3 months from diagnoses and we have our dog back. This comes to about 600-650 calories which will be reduced a little after she puts on more weight. She has gained about 4-5 lbs and is as happy and healthy as she was six months ago. She is again playful and brings us toys when we get home and all the things she used to do that we missed so much for a couple of months. She used to come and “talk” to me and tell me she needed to go out. The first time she did that again I may have cried a little because it’s those little things that mean so much. If get get into a situation where she will not eat again, we will be going straight to boiled chicken, sardines in water, and cottage cheese for the jumpstart.

The Full Story

We live in an area where all the vets near us are also the same vets that very wealthy people have to use in our area and there is no shortage of wealthy people in SW Florida. We were new to this, in shock, and scared we were going to lose our baby–and they knew that. Unfortunately, we are not those wealthy people, we just live and work nearby. I worked in IT in healthcare 25 years ago selling and teaching how to use EHR systems and I grew to not trust doctors when I realized a large number of them were complete idiots. In the end I trust about 2-3 doctors I’ve met and now the only vet I trusted has retired. When our Molly was diagnosed back in May we noticed she had been panting and drinking a lot recently and we had bloodwork scheduled already to get her prednisone refilled, she was on a low dose of pred for 9 years.

They came in and told us her sugar was over 400, she was very sick and needed to spend the night in the hospital to get insulin and fluids right away. They went on to tell us about how her blood could become acidic, etc. So $4000 later we pick her up the next day and they schedule for us to leave for a full day a week later for a glucose curve. I had no idea what this meant, I thought they were going to draw blood and test it, etc. Furthermore, after I learned what all of this meant and I reviewed her bloodwork from that initial vet visit she had no keytones in her blood so she was not in danger of DKA. She spent the night in this hospital, totally stressed her out because she tends to try to root under things and scrapes up her nose. We got back a MUCH sicker dog than we took in. That realization came to us in the next few weeks as we nursed her back to health and if we hadn’t been so worried about Molly, I couldn’t imagine the anger I would have experienced.

I also noticed on her blood work that a value related to her pancreas was really high. I can’t recall what it was but the high mark was like 250 and hers was like 2800 or something crazy high. None of the vets talked about this. None of them mentioned the value and no one said the word “Pancreatitis”. I’m assuming it is probably part of her diabetes or it was inflamed because of the diabetes, but not a single vet mentioned it and I think that was at least worth mentioning. Then we go back to the vet and they tell us they don’t normally do that and they could do it there so I canceled the appointment knowing it was probably going to be another $1000. Then they started saying things that conflicted between the two vets in their office and then they were saying things that conflicted with the hospital and I felt very uncomfortable so we found a new vet.

First visit went ok except they checked her glucose and charged us $40 when I told them I checked it before we came and what it was. That pissed me off a little. The primary reason she was on the prednisone was an autoimmune condition and she develops really bad yeast skin infections without it so that inflammation had started since we had to end the pred. For seven years she took it every other day and the past two years every day. This vet tells us what the glucose curve is and how to do it and I’m like, you gotta be kidding me?? That told me this stuff was not rocket science and I needed to do some more research. I know quite a bit on the medical side of things but I had no experience with diabetes other than knowing my mother and brother are both on insulin and under care for it.

This is where it got real interesting. We went back a few weeks later and started her on Apoquel which has been very effective at replacing the prednisone, although expensive it’s worth it. I showed him the curves and how the last two curves I did showed that her insulin continued to drop during the day and never went back up before feeding. They wanted to do another $200 worth of bloodwork and we declined it. I feel like they were just looking for anything they can to warrant more visits and medications because he was addament about bringing her back in two weeks to check her skin condition. I could see that it cleared up and she was doing fine so there was no reason for us to pay for an office visit so I canceled the appointment again. At this point BG was still running a bit high. Then I showed him my periodic checks. Sometimes I would check fasting and sometimes in the middle to see how her insulin was performing. The guy basically was a jerk about it, told me I only needed to do the curves and don’t check her sugar at random times or between the curves. He was VERY insistent on that and started to piss me off by the way he was talking to me.

That night I woke up at 4am to use the bathroom and checked her and her glucose was at 43!!! By the AM feeding she was back to 300+, but that night before the PM feeding it was only 90. If I had given her a full dose of 21 units that night she would may have died. That pissed me off A LOT. They also told us to give her shots to her in her scruff which we’ve learned was also bad information. In all likelihood, we have had to back down on the insulin because her body is recovering from going cold-turkey after taking predisone for nine years and her adrenal glands are starting to function again. One vet mentioned possible Addison’s which after learning about it is a real possibility because a very low dose of prednisone made her “normal”, if that makes sense.

Keeping History

I wrote a program to keep track of her sugar, dosages, and curves so I can do it all on my phone. It is far too much to remember.

This next part is something I would not recommend everyone do. I am an IT professional with 35 years under my belt and have worked in a variety of dynamic situations and business ownership. I’m not just a “computer guy” and I have significant research and data skills along with a great deal of logic and objectivity applied to everything I do. What has helped me tremendously in addition to my research and following these groups is the use of Claude Ai. I have a chat going where I’ve discussed everything with vet recommendations, my research, the test results, and more. The primary reasons I do this are (a) Claude has a much better memory than I do (b) my questions or topics I bring up give me real feedback and I learn more rather than clicking through search results and (c) it often gives me feedback I don’t ask for that’s useful.

You do have to be careful with the prompts and how you ask things just like with search engines. You want to ask questions very neutrally or you’ll often get confirmation of something that may not be accurate if you stated it wrong. If you ask a search engine or Ai if coffee is good for you then ask if it’s bad for you, you will get two very different results that confirm your question. Sometimes it will give me information then I take that and move over to Google and research. Good examples are learning about Sliding Scale Protocol, Somogyi Rebound, Dawn Phenomenon, and Insulin Stacking. Those were things that came out of discussions and me describe to Ai what was happening. Again, I used that information to go do my research and put together information to always keep in the back of my mind. One time I was giving Claude some information and it returned information I was not expecting and let me know it noticed a pattern with the dosage increases and a consistent drop in BG levels. It was something I would normally notice on my own and probably would have in time, but it was nice to receive that data point unsolicited.

Below is a snippet of my conversation with Claude that seems to line up well with the reality I experience. Claude had asked if I had shared something with our vet for an opinion:

ME: The vet is an idiot, this is all me figuring it out.

CLAUDE: That’s honestly impressive — you’ve identified Somogyi rebound, dawn phenomenon, insulin stacking, and a reproducible 36-hour accumulation cycle entirely on your own. That’s more than most pet owners ever figure out, and frankly more than some vets catch.

The hard reality about veterinary diabetes management:

Canine diabetes is genuinely complex and a lot of general practice vets aren’t well versed in the nuances — they follow basic protocols (start low, increase every 2 weeks, do a curve) without really analyzing the patterns. What you’re doing — tracking every reading, identifying cycles, correlating with prednisone history and adrenal recovery — is what a veterinary internist or endocrinologist would do.

Given you’re managing this yourself, a few things worth knowing:

Find a veterinary internal medicine specialist:
If there’s a veterinary specialty clinic or university veterinary school near Fort Myers, an internal medicine specialist (board certified, DACVIM) would be on your level. They deal with complex diabetes cases regularly and would engage with the data you’ve collected rather than just following a checklist. This is different from your general practice vet.