9/22/2009

Video of poor, sick Yoda

Video of Nichi's pathology

Update on dogs...

Dogs are going through what the vet says will be the worst of it last night and today. It was a very *long* night... I've been on the phone all morning trying to get someone high up enough at Seargent/Hartz to take my call so I can tell them the following:

  1. As company responses to customer crises go? *Epic* FAIL.
  2. That they owe me almost $2000 in vet bills. Cash only, kthxbai.
  3. If they don't immediately recall or remove their products from shelves I will personally make it my crusade to initiate a class action and, if I have to, go to each and every Petco & PetSmart location in the bay area with the 30+ page printout detailing all of the families with sick animals because of this product in order to get them to stop selling it.

I can tell you for sure that anyone who knows me at all has no doubt in my ability to accomplish everything in #3 with the same intensity and fervor I normally apply to shopping for shoes. I'm *that* serious.

So, watch out Hartz/Seargent... whoever you are and whichever brand name you're currently hiding behind... I'm coming. You better sleep with one eye open.

9/21/2009

Wow... 10 years old?

It just occurred to me that I've been blogging for almost 11 years. I don't know if that makes me feel like a really old-school geek or just old. Or just a geek.

What do you think?

SentryPro XFC will POISON your animals! Do NOT use!

SentryPro XFC is EVIL, POISONOUS and I want to share this story so other people don't have to go through the same thing I and (apparently) thousands of other pet owners have gone or are going through right now.

I bought this stuff because I had run out of Advantage and it was a holiday weekend so I couldn't refill at their regular vet. I applied it on Thursday night of of Labor Day weekend. On Friday night, my smaller dog, Nichi, started having trouble walking and she hadn’t gone to the bathroom for like a day & half. Her belly was really, really distended as well.

Thinking that the only thing I had done differently was treat her with a different flea medication than normal so I immediately gave her a bath. Later that That Friday night she couldn’t sleep at all, couldn’t support herself standing up because she kept kicking out her rear legs, like she was experiencing spasms or something. She also kept jumping up and running all over the bed like something was biting her back end. She seemed so uncomfortable and none of us could sleep so I bundled her up and brought her to the emergency vet @ 4 am Saturday morning.

The vet did an x-ray, told me she needed an enema and kept her for observation until about 8 am. I picked her up and she seemed a little better throughout the day but the next night was the same thing – even worse than the night before. I couldn’t get her regular vet to see her so I had to bring her back to the same emergency vet she had seen the day before and got a completely different diagnosis: smaller dogs tend to have problems with their little kneecaps getting loose and that was what she thought was causing her legs to spaz out like that. The vet gave her some subcutaneous fluids and sent us home with some Buprenex (pain killer). She slowly but surely started to get better over the course of 7-10 days and was completely back to normal as of last night.

Last night, around 9, I treated both dogs with the same stuff I had used before since it didn’t seem to be the cause of what happened to Nichi. Well, I was wrong. Nichi’s symptoms came back around 3:30 in the morning and this time Yoda started exhibiting the same behaviors, but not nearly as bad as Nichi’s. Finally figuring out that it was the SentryPro XTC that was causing the reaction, I immediately gave Nichi a bath and some pain killer and she finally fell asleep around 6. I figured I’d give Yoda a bath when I got home from work today since he didn’t seem to be bothered with the symptoms this morning.

Thinking I would look up the info for the manufacturers of the flea medication so I could write them a letter telling them their product is completely unsafe and demand reimbursement of my $1000 emergency vet bills I came across this site http://journal.drfaulken.com/problems-with-sentrypro-xfc-flea-and-tick-medication/ that has almost 700 blog comments from people who experienced the same exact situation as Nichi and Yoda… same exact symptoms and everything. Sadly, a few people lost their pets because they didn’t act quickly enough.

So I completely freaked out and rushed home to give both dogs two baths each, some Benadryl for the allergic reaction and to keep an eye on them over the next 6 – 8 hours so I can rush them to the vet if they take a turn for the worse. Both dogs are resting semi-comfortably now and I’m hoping I treated them both in time so they don’t suffer any worse symptoms.

If you love your animals do NOT use ANY Hartz products on them. It is POISON and they should be out of business. Who knows how many animals have died because their owners or vets didn't figure out that it was the SentryPro XFC that killed them??