pet connection

No food or drug can ever be made 100 percent safe, and that’s a fact.

I’m OK with that, because life can’t ever be made 100 percent safe, and that’s a fact, too. Honestly, who would want life to be 100 percent safe? Not me, for sure, because that would be awfully damn dull.

I know that even under the best of circumstances food will occasionally be contaminated and need to be recalled. I can forgive a company for that, although my level of forgiveness will vary depending on how likely the company was to know that there was a problem, and how much of the resulting problem was due to accident, or to a decision after doing the math that a few dead pets (or people) weren’t worth the cost of making changes.

When there is a problem, though, I expect — no, I demand — that a company make a real, true and honest effort to let everyone know about it, not dump-and-run a media release late on a Friday night. I want the information front and center on  company’s Web site, and I want to see that the company is making at least as big an effort to get bad product back as they did to market their goods in the first place.

And then I want a company to be honest about what happened, how it happened, and have a plan for getting the problem fixed so the problem — at least not that problem — won’t happen again.

With all that in mind, I say this: Nature’s Variety is a case in point of how to handle a recall right.

They never hid their recall notices — always the first thing you saw on their Web site.  They reached out to retailers, purchasers, media and bloggers to make sure the word got out. And now, they’ve reviewed their internal manufacturing process and are making changes:

… Nature’s Variety now uses High Pressure Pasteurization on our Raw Frozen Diets as a unique process to kill pathogenic bacteria through high-pressure, water-based technology. Having incorporated this state-of-the-art technology on our Freeze Dried Raw products in late 2009, we were able to confidently implement the process universally on all Raw Frozen Diets after the February 11, 2010 recall in order to further enhance food safety. Nature’s Variety also utilizes a test and hold protocol to ensure that all High Pressure Pasteurized Raw Frozen Diets test negative for harmful bacteria before being released for sale.

Let’s repeat that:

Nature’s Variety also utilizes a test and hold protocol to ensure that all High Pressure Pasteurized Raw Frozen Diets test negative for harmful bacteria before being released for sale.

You know what makes me sad? That this sort of thing is news, not standard operating procedure in the food industry.  I have hope, though, that it increasingly will be. Or that we can make sure it will be, by law.

In the meantime, kudos to Nature’s Variety for behaving in such an overtly responsible way.

Look, this is America. Kudos to anyone who can get people to unleash $15 (at full retail) for a cardboard box. But after looking at the video (h/t to Patti S!) I know that my retrievers wouldn’t take a full minute to figure out that ripping the box to shreds would deliver alllllll the treats and the tennis ball, too.

Don’t know what that says about this Labrador’s IQ.  Or the IQ of anyone who doesn’t look at the video and figure out how to make this at home (if desired) for … uh… nothing.

Click on the image to see the vid on Amazon.com.

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In this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature,  Dr. Marty Becker and Gina Spadafori tackle one of the toughest questions pet owners ever face:

Choosing to end a pet’s life is the hardest decision we make when it comes to our pets, and we can tell you from decades of experience that it’s a decision that never gets any easier. Your veterinarian will offer you advice and support, and friends and family can offer you sympathy, but no one can make the decision for you. When you live with an elderly or terminally ill pet, you look in your pet’s eyes every morning and wonder if you’re doing what’s best.

Everyone makes the decision a little differently. Some pet lovers do not wait until their pet’s discomfort becomes chronic, untreatable pain, and they choose euthanasia much sooner than others would. Some owners use an animal’s appetite as the guide — when an old or ill animal cannot be tempted into eating, they reason, he has lost most interest in life. And some owners wait until there’s no doubt the time is at hand — and later wonder if they delayed a bit too long.

Also from Dr. Becker, reassuring news about the safety of pet microchips:

Veterinary experts say there is no evidence that cancer is a problem in microchipped pets. More than 14 million-plus microchips have been implanted with only four cases in question.

Want more? Read the entire Pet Connection for this week! You can also download it just the way we send it to our client newspapers right here (PDF).

After hearing what Dr. Laura D. Garrett of the University of Illinois had to say about Palladia at last month’s Western Veterinary Conference, I realized there’s more to the story than the fact that this is the first drug approved in the United States to treat canine cancer.

Palladia (toceranib phosphate) is what’s known as a “tyrosine kinase inhibitor.” That means it blocks an enzyme that can help cancer spread.

Other tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) include the human drugs Sutent (sunitinib) and Gleevec (imatinib mesylate), and a European veterinary drug, Masivet (masitinib), which will be known as “Kinavet” if it’s approved in the United States.

Right now, Palladia is approved to treat mast cell tumors in dogs, and it’s fairly successful at treating those that don’t respond to other forms of treatment. In one study, mast cell tumors were reduced in size in 43 percent of dogs who received the drug, while only 8 percent of the dogs given placebo responded similarly.

Dr. Garrett, who is a board certified specialist in oncology, cautioned that TKIs are not a first line of treatment, but are meant to be used for particularly severe mast cell disease and only after other forms of treatment, like surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, have failed.

Even then, these drugs don’t always work. But for some mast cell tumors, particularly those with mutations in what’s known as the c-kit gene, TKIs have a much greater chance of success. Your veterinarian can have your dog’s tumor tested to see if it has that mutation.

Another big plus to treating cancer with Palladia is that it can be given at home, unlike other forms of chemotherapy. However, that’s a minus, too, because it can cause pretty severe side effects, mostly gastrointestinal. Owners have to be very vigilant in watching for signs of diarrhea or vomiting, and getting the dog to the veterinarian immediately.

There’s another potential benefit for dogs in the approval of a veterinary TKI: research. Manufacturers of human drugs don’t test them for how well they work in animals, but those making veterinary drugs do. Pfizer and AB Science are continuing to sponsor research into mast cell tumor treatment and other uses of their TKIs, which can lead to better ways to treat many kinds of cancer.

And once a veterinary drug is approved for one use, it can legally be used “off-label” to help animals with other problems. So veterinarians can try TKIs in the hope that they might benefit animals who aren’t responding to other therapies. Their outcomes will contribute to the body of knowledge about this class of cancer drugs, and possibly lead to new research and new and better therapies.

The first FDA-approved veterinary cancer drug isn’t going to cure every case, or even most of them. Neither will other tyrosine kinase inhibitors as they roll out of the pipeline. But cancer is one of the worst enemies a veterinarian ever battles. The more weapons we have against it, the better.

Right now, only boarded specialists who treat cancer have access to the drug, although it’s expected to be available to veterinarians in general practice later this year. If your dog is diagnosed with a mast cell tumor and you want more information on TKIs, talk to your veterinarian and see if he’s likely to be helped by this drug.

Photo courtesy of Pfizer Animal Health.

Disclosures: Palladia is manufactured by Pfizer Animal Health, and Pfizer sponsors the web archive of the Pet Connection syndicated feature.

Dr. Garrett does not work for Pfizer, but received an honorarium for presenting on Palladia at the Western Veterinary Conference. She also received, as did all board certified veterinary specialists who treat cancer, free Palladia for use in her patients during its testing and introduction.

Want to change your cat’s diet? For the owners of many cats addicted to one food and one food only, that switch falls under the “easier said than done” category.

My cat Dickens has health issues that meant a diet change, but he arrived here at the age of 9 months as a kibble addict. When we discovered he had struvite crystals at the age of one and a half, I tried to incorporate canned food, but he wasn’t having any of it. Apparently canned food is, in this cat’s opinion, inedible.

He’s not alone. Dr. Lisa Peterson of CatInfo.org says that cats are often extremely hard to switch from one diet to another. Many are “addicted” to kibble, but more and more feline experts are suggesting that diets high in moisture content are healthier for cats. Others need to make the switch to a diet formulated for a specific health problem. Either way, diet change can be a difficult prescription to fill:

There are few things in life more frustrating than dealing with a finicky cat. The members of this species can be incredibly “set in their ways” when it comes to their dietary preferences. Cats, like children, often resist what is best for them.

The two most frequent comments that I hear from people when trying to convince them to feed their cats a healthier diet are “my cat won’t eat canned food” and “but my cat really likes his dry food.” Children really like potato chips and ice cream but that certainly does not mean those food items constitute optimal nutrition.

The transition process often involves much more than just plunking down a new food item. Time, patience, and tricks are often required.

One reason that cats like dry food so much is because the pet food companies do not play fair when manufacturing this sub-optimal food source. They coat the kibble with extremely enticing animal digest sprays which are very pleasing to a cat – making a poor quality diet very desirable to the target animal.

In addition to the aforementioned coating of dry food with animal digests, another issue is one of a crunchy texture which is very different from canned food. Cats are very resistant to such a drastic change in the texture of their food.

What can owners do? Fortunately, Dr. Peterson has suggestions and step-by-step tips:

The key is to do it slowly and with patience and incorporate various tricks for the stubborn cats. The most important issue is actually making the change, not how fast you accomplish it. I must say that my cats tested every ounce of patience I had over a 3 + month period of time during their transition from dry to canned food. They had been on dry food their entire lives and did not recognize canned food as food. My cats ranged in age from 2 years to 10 years at the time of the transition.

The single biggest mistake I see people make time and again is to say that their cat “won’t touch” the new food and then panic and fill up the bowl with dry food. In many cases, it is simply not that easy to get cats off of dry food! So, roll up your sleeves and be prepared to patiently out-stubborn your cat.

Boiled down to the basics, Dr. Peterson recommends switching diets when a cat is healthy, not when he gets sick. She recommends starting by mixing the two types of food together, and not to free feed because no one will change when they’re not hungry. You will end up throwing away some unconsumed canned food.

On the flip side, never let them go without eating for more than 24 hours maximum because they could get the potentially fatal hepatic lipidosis.

She offers numerous tips – freezing tuna water, sprinkling parmesan cheese, offering deli meat, dipping some kibble in juice from the can, crush the kibble and sprinkle it over the wet food, pet the cat while he’s eating wet food, and so on. The real trick is to have lots of patience for these enigmatic pets (or as I often call them, c*ts.) This is where we all need to stand up to the yowling and not buckle under to the pressure of the pleas. Keep reminding yourself that this change is the best thing for their health, and therefore for your peace of mind and wallet.

A year after Dickens had struvite crystals, he was having increasing difficulties with chronic constipation. I changed his kibble, shaved his long hair into a lion cut, gave him canned pumpkin, and gave him a stool softener at every meal. At the advice of a feline specialist I work with at the Veterinary Information Network, I made other changes. I started him off with little bits of heated, cooked chicken and then stopped heating it. Then I increased the amount of chicken. Then I started incorporating a commercial raw chicken mix  (I don’t even prepare food for myself most of the time.) Eventually he was eating only the raw chicken mixture, with the exception of an occasional rodent.

On Christmas day, Dickens and I spent the morning in the ER where he had an enema that removed a two-inch “clay-like” piece of stool. This blockage meant we were back to the drawing board for his diet.

Through trial and error with my veterinarian, we’ve arrived at a solution that seems to work for his obstipation (that’s the fancy word for chronic constipation).  Half of his meal is chicken I cook, and the other half is a high fiber kibble. He gets stool softener with every meal. Once or twice a week he gets flavored chewable cisapride.  Once in a great while I’ll use tuna instead of chicken. I want to get to the point where he’s not eating any kibble again, but for the moment this delicate balance of food is working for his urinary and digestive issues.

The good news is that he does not seem to have megacolon. The bad news is that we don’t know what’s wrong, but his low folate levels have improved, he’s gained weight, he’s pooping and peeing pretty normally, so for right now he’s doing well. Now he eats the chicken before he eats the kibble, whereas before kibble was his world. His diet over his lifetime – and his third birthday is in a couple of weeks – will undoubtedly see saw depending on his health issues.

The more willing he is to eat whatever is best for him at  any given time, the better off he’ll be. We all need to remember that and ignore the yowling, even if the neighbors think you are somehow torturing your c*ts.