Today, I got a little more serious about developing the techniques to do some blood glucose and biochemistry of anticipation studies with Gata. These are based on some work that Robert Gillette has done and should complement the work that Dr. Eeg is doing as well as what we did during the visit to Auburn.
The problem is, I feel like I'm torturing my dogs to get a drop of blood from them. The recommended lance site is the tip of the ear. I'm not quite sure why, but it barely bleeds on my dogs. Both are being great about it, but I definitely don't like the idea of lancing them several times to get a single drop of blood. Definitely need to get some help from Dr. Eeg on this one. He has the same system and recommended the ear tip. At first I thought the lance just wasn't working. But when I tried it on my finger tip, it is definitely working! That only made me feel worse about torturing my dogs :-( The only good thing about it was that both dogs got plenty of treats for playing along and being such good sports. So, at least they don't yet hate the process.
Anyway, I was able to get resting levels on both dogs and an "anticipation" level on Gata. Both dogs got 10 ml of 50% dextrose following the resting reading and 30 minutes before the anticipation reading.
Gata - 91 mg/dl (Resting); 139 mg/dl (Anticipation)
Tor - 131 mg/dl (Resting); unable to get an Anticipation sample
After that I worked with them both. It was a relatively cool, gray day. Both dogs were more than happy to play and seemed to be plenty energized with the 10 ml of dextrose in their system. Nothing too programmed today - just some obedience interspersed with modified interval sets. Enough to wear them both out for the rest of the day - more or less the equivalent of 3 sets of 5 with alternating obedience work between the two during the breaks. A good time was had by all :-)
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