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Giving Your Pet Insulin

Feb 1, 1993

Giving Your Pet Insulin. What is an animal's regimen of insulin injections like? The best case scenario would be giving an injection once a day, and its a simple subcutaneous injection. We use disposable ultra-sharp needles just like they use in human medicine. We prescribe the same ones from the pharmacies. Most animals will take a daily injection, or even a twice-daily injection, without any complaint.

How many units?

For cats, we start out at about a unit or two of insulin for the easiest ones, and it goes up to maybe a unit per pound-up to eight or ten units. For cats we're almost always diluting the insulin.

What kind of insulin?

What's available for human use, which raises some problems of course because we don't have a purified canine of feline recombinant insulin available to us, which would probably help us in some of our cases.

Where are the injections usually given?

Usually the injection sights are up from the neck and shoulders on back about half way down the spine, because that's an area, especially in cats, that they don't mind little pin pricks. They seem to take their shots real well, and dogs and cats have a lot more loose skin than people do, so subcutaneous injections hurt a lot less.

Categories: Insulin, Pets

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