Your Pet's Best Friend

Lead paint in dog toys.

This is nothing to lose sleep over.  While it is certainly true that lead is toxic and you shouldn't eat it, the potential hazards of the involved toys have been way overblown.

So, some toy tennis balls like this have lead paint in the pawprints.  How much of this would your dog have to actually eat in order to have a problem?  Here is what Sharon Gwaltney-Brant DVM, PhD, DABVT, DABT of the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center says:

"So let's calculate a toxic dose for a 10 kg (22 pounds) dog. Assuming worst case scenario, we know that chronic toxicosis is induced at 3-30 mg/kg/day; we'll use the 3. For a 10 kg dog, that's 30 mg of lead per day times 90 days (3 month subchronic study) for a total lead dose of 2700 mg. Let's also assume that somehow the dog manages to eat 1/2 oz (15 gm, 0.015 kg) of leaded paint (at 30 ppm) off of these toys every day (unlikely there's even that much total paint on a toy, but we'll call this worst case scenario). So every day the dog is eating 0.45 mg of lead; it'll take 6000 days to get to the chronic toxic dose of 2700 mg of lead. That's 16.4 years. So, if the dog, every day, scrapes off 1/2 oz (1 tablespoon) of paint from toys/bowls whose paint contains 30 ppm of lead, the dog might finally develop lead toxicosis when it hits 16 years of age. Very very unlikely. Allowable levels for humans should be fine for dogs, especially since dogs don't live as long as we do (risk assessments for humans have to take into account our long life span). "

My brothers and I have laughed about the concerns with children's toys and lead paint.  Certainly it wouldn't be funny for children to be poisoned by eating their toys, but we had toys made out of lead. In fact, we made them ourselves, in our room, without adult supervision, when our ages were 4, 7 and 11.   First, you coat the cast-iron molds with soot by using the open flame of a candle.  Then the two halves of the mold are clamped together.  In the meantime, the lead has been heating up until it is all melted, its liquid surface shimmering like silver.

Now, while we inhale the acrid fumes, the cauldron of molten lead is tipped carefully to pour the mold full, making some shiny new lead soldiers.  Of course, sometimes we weren't as careful as we should have been.  Once some hot lead landed on my toe.  We were in our pajamas and barefoot while doing this.  I skipped briskly to the bathroom and dunked my toe in what commercials used to refer to as "the bathroom bowl".  This was screamingly funny to my little brothers, and little children often find it amusing even today.

So, you shouldn't eat lead paint, and the Chinese are bums for putting it on toys, but your dog is probably not going to get enough to hurt him... unless he helps us make lead soldiers.

Pet Food Recall Rises from the Grave

Two different issues this time.  A couple of different foods recalled due to possible Salmonella (the germ that causes "food poisoning") contamination: Krasdale Gravy dry, and Red Flannel large breed dry foods.  Check out the Mars Pet Care site.

For more  Salmonella opportunities, try "Eight in One" chicken jerky.  Here's the FDA listing on those products and how to get them.

On the melamine front (our regular, reliable, Chinese poisonous contamination), Wal-Mart has removed some fabulous Chinese chicken jerky from their shelves.  Their official statement is more about what responsible merchants they are than anything else, but it does list the product. 

It's always good to know that people are learning from their mistakes.  By people, I mean US, not Wal-Mart. 

Pet Food Recall rises from the grave.

This one has nothing to do with the Chinese wheat gluten.  Castleberry is a company that manufactures a lot of canned chili and junk, and some Natural Balance canned dog food.  They have had a little bit of a botulism problem. Not enough to make the cans bulge up and scare you off, but enough to make you pretty darn sick if you ate it.  Here's a list of their affected products.  It's a voluntary recall, so that just shows you what good sports they are.  As always, the link has been added to our special pet food recall web page.  Sheesh.

Chocolate Overdose

Many folks have heard that "chocolate is poisonous to pets".  As far as that goes, if you eat a massive enough amount, it's poisonous to people, too.  Yes, yes, I hear you out there saying that chocolate is actually an essential nutrient, that you can't live without it (or life isn't worth living without chocolate, or something like that).  Yes, I know that a small amount of dark chocolate is considered beneficial to your heart.  I eat some every day, though it's mostly because I like it --the heart benefit is just serendipitous.  Dogs are different than people and DO NOT require chocolate in their diets.

The toxicity of chocolate is very much dose-related, and generally speaking, it takes a pretty massive amount to be poisonous.  When someone calls me in a panic because their dog ate an M&M, they are beating themselves up for nothing.  Theobromine is the toxic compound in chocolate, and in large amounts it can make your heart race, give you vomiting and diarrhea, cause seizures, and even death.  For a great discussion from VeterinaryPartner.com, check out this link to "Chocolate Toxicity".  You'll see from the table at the bottom, it takes a LOT of milk chocolate, and quite a bit of dark chocolate, although it doesn't take very much baking chocolate at all.  That's why when Fifi gets a couple of Hershey's Kisses, we're not too worried.

So, when Kaiser's mom asked if eating Hershey's miniatures would hurt him, I said, "Unless he ate handfuls, I wouldn't worry too much."  She went home and found that between Kaiser (73 pounds) and his roommate Dixie (13 pound Min-Pin), they had gone through most of three pounds.   Now, doing the math (if you followed the link and looked at the chart), you'd see that Kaiser would have had to eat 63 ounces of milk chocolate, and we only had 48 ounces total. 

Plus, there were a number of partially mangled bars that didn't get eaten.    Dixie, on the other hand, would only have to eat 13 ounces, and even less if she concentrated on the "special dark chocolate" (my favorite).  So Kaiser is bigger and greedier, and might have eaten it all.  BUT, Dixie is younger and faster, so how do we know who ate how much?  And who likes the "Mister Goodbars" and who likes the "Krackels"?  And for that matter, who ever buys a full sized Krackel bar?  I've never seen one outside of the miniatures.

Fortunately, we were within an hour of the ingestion, so the order of the day was to induce vomiting in both dogs.  As it happened, Dixie only brought up a few specks of chocolate and wrappers.  Kaiser, however, while he may have eaten less than a poisonous dose... well, you could have fooled me.

Talk about your chocolate mess.  It may not have made Kaiser sick, but the rest of us were getting pretty queasy by the time we had everything cleaned up.  After they finished vomiting, we gave them some activated charcoal (the "universal antidote": it acts like a chemical "sponge" to soak up toxins in the gut) to be on the safe side.  I anticipate that all will be well, but we won't be serving any pudding at staff meetings for a while.

Pet Food Recall - just a tiny one

This is pretty much out of my "local listening area".  Some bags of Ol' Roy have been recalled out east due to some Salmonella contamination at the factory.  Salmonella is the bacteria most often associated with "food poisoning".  The big dogs say you can get infected with it from just handling the contaminated food.  This is a local factory, one-shot deal as  far as we can tell.  Probably wouldn't have made the news if not for all the previous commotion.  Here's the link.

Pet Food Recall versus Godzilla

Okay, now I am running low on titles.  This is still pretty shaky stuff, but since it appeared on Veterinary Information Network, I'm passing it on.  Some pet food samples are believed to be contaminated with acetaminophen (Tylenol).  This would have small consequence for most dogs, but it doesn't take much to put a cat over the edge.  It remains to be seen whether this is  actually a significant phenomenon or perhaps even a scam (like the finger in the chili at Wendy's).

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the link to the story.

Pet Food Recall rears its ugly head again.

I don't have a company link for this one, but a Consumer Affairs website has the story on "Nutra Nuggets".  They were consumed in California, but apparently were manufactured back in old Missouri.  I'm so proud.

Pet Food Recall: Just when you thought it was safe to go near the water

I keep thinking people are going to quit stone-walling and all 'fess up at once.  I guess I'm wrong.  Here's the link to the Chenango Valley Pet Foods listing on the FDA's website.  As always, I've added it to the KVC webpage.  Things have been pretty busy lately, but I hope to get back to a little blogging this weekend.

Son of the Pet Food Recall Returns

Royal Canin has announced a new recall, due to finding melamine derivatives in some batches.  The foods are marketed under the Sensible Choice and Kasco trade names.  The link has the batch dates and numbers.  As always, the link has been added to the KVC webpage.

Pet Food Recall, Nasty food preservatives, and the Everlasting Bagel

Wednesday's Wall Street Journal carried two articles that were obviously prompted by our pet-food recall problems.  The first is about an apparent widespread use of unsafe additives for local consumption on a routine basis across Asia.

Formaldehyde, which has been linked to cancer, has legitimate uses in adhesives and embalming.  But in Indonesia, Sutikno, a 35-year-old tofu maker in south Jakarta who goes by one name, uses it to keep the tofu he sells fresh.  "Formaldehyde is magic. There is no comparison," he said on a recent afternoon at the market.  Last year, he switched briefly to a legal preservative, but his bean curd went bad in less than 24 hours.  As for his customers, he doesn't tell them he uses formaldehyde.  "There is no complaint," Mr. Sutikno said.  There's more, and you can read it if you want to, but you probably don't want to.  Yeesh!

The second article, entitled "101 Brand Names, 1 Manufacturer" contains some inaccurate propositions.  While it is certainly true that many foods are made in the same factory and just have different labels slapped on them, there are some misconceptions in the article.  One of them is the suggestion that if the "crude analysis" appears equivalent on food labels, then the only difference is in the packaging and price.  This label is the one that says things like "crude protein 10%", etc.  What the WSJ writer doesn't know is just how crude that crude analysis is.   The numbers on that tag have nothing to do with how nutritious the food is.  It's not much better than incinerating the food and doing a chemical analysis on the smoke that comes off.  So much nitrogen boiling off is plugged into a formula that will equal "crude protein". It could be steak, pig nose hair, or something that tastes like chicken.  It's all protein, but it doesn't all have equal digestibility or nutritional value.

The crude analysis does figure into the recall thing.  Some investigators have speculated that the melamine found in the imported wheat gluten was introduced deliberately, rather than being an accidental contaminant, as it could bump up the protein percentage in our friend, the "crude analysis".  Ah, those inscrutable orientals. 

Alas, I don't think Asians have any monopoly on cheating for dollars.  They just don't have as much supervision and regulation as we do.  I'm sure there were Americans who wished that they had thought of adding melamine to their products.

The Asians don't have a monopoly on well-preserved and non-nutritious foods, either.  Behold the Everlasting Bagel.  Although its brown color and "Honey Wheat" label suggest it is made with whole wheat, it's not.  First ingredient on the label is "enriched wheat flour", which is the bleached white stuff that's got most of the nutrients processed out of it.  Yes, this is your basic white bread dolled up in healthy clothing by our friends at Sara Lee. ["Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."]  My wife bought this package of bagels in September, 2006.  The bag says, "best by 9/15/2006".  Real whole-wheat bread and bagels have come and gone through the same bread-basket many times since then.  More than a few have become moldy when they stayed around past a week.  Not the Everlasting Bagel, though. It stayed soft and squishy until January. It's not totally hard even now in May.  No mold, I suspect, because the Everlasting Bagel contains nothing nutritious for it to live on. I shudder to think that I actually ate one of these.  I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the package, but the dog is looking pretty well-preserved.