Insulin Resistant Diabetic Yorkie
Hi All, was hoping I could get the advice of a Vet or an experienced community member as I'm kind of at a loss of what to do next. We have a Yorkie, used to be 12 lbs, she's always been resistant to Insulin but no Cushing's has ever been detected. She does have some pancreatic issues which I guess is what brought on the Diabetes. She used to be on Lantus but that's being discontinued, our vet has recommended Tresiba and so we've started her on that. Initiate suggested dosage was 1 unit a day, we've titrated her all the way up to 7 units a day at her evening feeding now and she gets a 2.5 unit Lantus bridge shot in the morning during her morning feeding. We have a Freestyle Libre 3 on her during this monitoring process to get frequent readings. Nothing seems to be fully working, a normal daily pattern has been: 380ish right before night feeding, 350s immediately after feeding/Tresiba, quick glucose spike due to food back to 375s about 1.5 hrs after eat, then a gradual downward to 250-275 for a couple of hours.. Then right back to 350-375 for the rest of the night with 1 to 2 drops back near 285-300 in the middle of the night.. By morning she's right back to 375-400 until her next feeding where a similar pattern occurs except the Lantus bridge of 2.5u does help bring her down under 300 for a couple of hours. Key notes: She is on Hills diet food multi-purpose w/d. 65g per feeding 2x a day. I've added 15g boiled chicken because during this insulin phase she's dropped from 12lbs to 9.5lbs and looks terrible and I think that has helped a bit but I understand why she's losing, she is starving and eating herself cuz of the high glucose. She eats well, in fact, she's RAVENOUS at all times and it breaks my heart to see her starving all day every day.
My question.. should I give up on Tresiba? Is it supposed to be 1x a day shot, previous insulin was 2x a day at each feeding. Is 7 units too high for a 10lb dog or should we keep progressing higher? I didn't want to split to 3.5 twice a day since even the 7 units once a day immediately after feeding doesn't ever bring her below 250 and she doesn't stay there long at all. Our vet has been using ChatGPT to help and I'm concerned he does not have the experience needed on diabetic dogs. Also, he's been pretty unresponsive for weeks which leads me to believe he's thrown in the towel and wants us to find someone else so we're kind of at a loss of what to do now and would appreciate any advice. I don't think we're giving fur shots, the needle is 1inch and we make sure it goes in at least more than half way in. We try a 45 degree angle downward after pulling the neck skin up but she has so little skin left it's not much to pull. Sorry, long winded post, just wanted to provide as much info as possible to see if anyone had any ideas?
Posted Apr 8, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC