Abby, Then Sport And Now Recall, lost two long-time pets Options

[MizzouMom]

I have found comfort here before from caring pet owners during a pet crisis, and felt the need to visit here again.

After months of dealing with kidney failure and unknown lung disease in our 18-year-old Abby kitty, we lost her in January. I was doing daily subcutaneous fluids for the last month, and finally her lungs were so bad we couldn't go on.

Two months later our approximately 14-year-old shelter dog Sport died after a sudden illness. He had lost some weight in the last year but had remained active and happy. I had been top-dressing his food with some canned Iams over the winter to encourage his appet*ite and try to help him gain weight, but he developed vomiting and diarrhea about 3 weeks ago.

Took him to the vet on a Friday morning and by Saturday night he was gone. Now I see that the food I was giving him was on the recall list, though I no longer have any cans here and can't really prove it.

Talk about guilt. These two were our most elderly pets and had been here through my children's childhoods. I did all I could for Abby, but Sport's passing was a shock. And now I feel quite sure that he died because of this contaminated food.

Yes, he was probably 14, but he had time left. How to cope with this rationally? Placing blame and lawsuits are not an answer in our case, though I'm sure that is going to happen to the company at fault as this story proceeds. I'm angry and confused. Iams used to be the "good stuff" that we fed our show dogs in the mid 70's, and I'm sorry, but I'll never buy it again.

[MizzouMom]

I talked to my vet today after hearing about the recall and he doesn't think it was renal failure per se because they did blood work and said the kidney values were okay. His theory was more a toxin or bacteria because the primary symptoms were uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting. There's an aol story tonight about the recall in which they describe a two-year-old German Shepherd which is going to pull through but whose symptoms were also diarrhea and vomiting rather than simply renal failure, so who knows how this will all unravel.

Here's the hitch - after what we went through with Abby and the speciality clinic, my husband asked me to stick with our local guy from now on - he's basically large and small animal and a very caring person, but not a small animal specialist. I don't want to say that I don't trust his opinion because he's done some good work for me, but he's a far cry from the level of care that we had with the specialty clinic which was, to be honest, perhaps too much care.

Deciding how much care is enough is turning out to be one of the toughest decisions with our geriatric animal household.