Fibre is best baked into foods. Blood glucose fluctuations can also be lowered through feeding several small meals. Chicken, egg, cottage cheese, rice and pasta, with calcium supplements from eggshells or elsewhere can be used for home-cooked diets, together with oat or bran fibre and a vitamin supplement. Regular commercial dog food should not be used, since it may have simple sugars not displayed in ingredients lists, and some extruded foods may also be unsuitable due to having a higher simple carbohydrate percentage than baked foods. A sample diet is provided in the article.
Exercise benefits diabetic dogs, though several short walks are better than fewer and longer walks.
Owners should give dogs biscuits if walks turn out to be long, and always have glucose in case of hypoglycaemia. Feed meals before exercise to help reduce blood glucose peaks after meals. Insulin is usually given twice a day through injections in the neck, with food given at the time of injections and four hours after if needed. Dogs take three or four days to adjust to dosages, with initial evaluations from four to seven days following initial treatment. Dogs should be walked frequently before urine tests, and tests should not be carried out using morning urine.