The Bad

My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.
-Edith Wharton

During the week of March 19th I took my dog Kate to the Vet because she had been having trouble keeping her food down, seemed to be in pain, and was loosing excessive amounts of hair. The Vet drew blood and when the report came back he discovered that Kate was in the beginning stages of renal (kidney) failure. When I heard those words I thought, "Oh no, not again."
We had to put Emma down because her kidneys had quit functioning after she had been poisoned by antifreeze and hearing those words again felt like a kick in the stomach. Kate's kidney problem was diagnosed right after the pet food recall had been announced. Since we had not been feeding her any of the food on the list we thought it was pretty ironic that she would be diagnosed with the major consequence of eating the contaminated food. Then on March 30th Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy was put on the recall list.

We have always had problems with Kate's arthritis pain medications upsetting her stomach and as a consequence it had been difficult to get her to eat. We usually only feed our dogs dry dog food but we decided to put some canned (wet) food in with her dry to see if that would stimulate her appetite. We started buying cans of Alpo in late January and would put one to two tablespoons in with her dry food. It worked, she started eating again. Then in March she started throwing-up again. We thought that the pain meds we had switched her to were tearing her stomach up just like the other meds she had been on so took her off of the pain medication and try a new chewy type of glucosamine, creatine, MSM supplement. At the same time we switched her to a sensitive stomach dog food formula and quit putting any additives of any kind (no people food, no Alpo) into her food. Both changes seemed to work for about a week and then she started throwing up again. That is when we took her to the Vet clinic.

The Vet started Kate on a something called Calcitriol. Calcitriol is an oily liquid that helps balance the calcium levels in Kate's blood. She is also on a low protein dog food since protein is hard for her damaged kidneys to process. She just had her blood checked again and the Vet said everything looked good. This was not a surprise to me because there had been such a change in her since we started this new regime. She no longer looks uncomfortable, her eyes are brighter, her coat looks healthy, she wags her tail more, and she is very playful. All signs that she feels better. The Vet said that it looks like Kate will be fine but she will be on this new medicine for the rest of her life and if her kidneys get worse other medicines will by added. Damaged kidneys cannot repair themselves.

The thing that bothers me the most about this incident is not that we got caught in the pet food recall, although I wish we had not, but that I unknowingly fed my dog something that hurt her. I am pretty sure this is the reaction of all pet owners who were affected by this.