[targa911S]

Well our 11 year old Airedale, Buddy, crashed on us last week. He has been acting pretty sluggish lately and went in for his annual exam and shots about 3 weeks ago. All his numbers were good including his blood work with the exception of blood sugar which was a little high at the time. In the next 3 weeks, he lost his appetite, started drinking copious amounts of water, and was having mobility problems. I must point out at this time that he has ben on prednizone for about a year as he also has colitis and he bleeds in his stool without it. I call my vet, who is a good vet, and she says she wants to see him right away. We do another blood test and now his sugar is through the roof, with traces of ketones present. She says he is now diabetic and we need to get him on insulin right away to bring his levels down. This now means I have to catch his piss in a cup 2x daily, check his levels, and administer shots in appropriate amounts. It has been about a week and we have seen little or no improvement. He still will only eat if I put something special on his food, he drinks gallons of water, sleeps, and then pisses himself in his sleep. When he goes out, he makes it to the woods, about 50 ft. from the house, but falls when he tries to poop, and I have to go out and help him up. Once up he is real wobbly and cannot make it up one step into the house without help. The vet had me also stop the Pred, as she feels that is what is causing the shutdown of his pancreas hence the sugar increase. However, now he has started passing blood in his poop again, badly. It's a catch 22. He seems alert but he can only lay around and little else. Even with insulin his levels are still through the roof, so it doesn't look like that is helping. We also put him back on the pred so he can poop.

Now of course we love him and want to help him as much as we can, just as we have done in the past. Today he has an appointment with the vet again and I'm really wondering if we should consider putting him down if he will not respond to treatment.

What do ya'll think? It's hard for me as I'm emotionally involved here.