stormie

I would probably try to get more information on the actual cause of the infection. If it's something like Aspergillus it could be very difficult to treat. Good luck!

I'm not promoting Euk, G.G and never have. I feed raw. Yes, our clinic sells Euk, but we also sell Eagle Pack, TuckerTime, some Royal Canin and Hills. Just because I'm looking at it from another point of view, does not mean I am working for the company or have any connection to them. I don't think this recall is AS serious as the ones we have seen due to Melamine or Irradiation problems. Dogs have very strong stomachs which allow them to deal with bacteria like Salmonella in MOST CASES. Their main concern, from what I've been told, is human infection. It is unlikely that should a dog consume some kibble that had Salmonella on it, that they'd show symptoms. It's a possibility though, as is human infection, so they recalled. If you read post posts properly, you'll see that I'm just saying 'atleast they do the testing' and found out about this to do the recall. I don't know why it took them a week to do the recall here. I don't know how their process works. I'm merely pointing out that maybe lots of dry food has been sold and fed, that may have had salmonella contamination because the company doesn't test for it. But yes, G.G, clearly after being here so long, and reading all my posts, it 'must make sense'. I should say, after reading the responses to this, it's made me realise, what hope do any kibble companies have of satisfying people? We complain because they don't use enough meat, but too much grains. We complain because it's cooked at such a high temperature which destroys so much of the nutrients. But then we complain when they get a possible bacterial contamination from using meat, or not cooking it high enough, or however it happened. Then you get a food like Orijen. They didn't cook their foods at a high enough temp for Aust rules, so they agreed to have the food irradiated before entering the country, without carrying out any tests on the food first. Turns out that was a bad mistake and a number of cats were affected quite badly. Many people complained, and quite rightly, because they didn't bother testing it first. Yet here we have a company who claims to have a high level of quality control and regularly test their product, get a positive, decide to recall so as to reduce any impact, and still everyone complains.

Well they are saying it was a company decision to pull. Euk made the decision to recall, so they are calling it voluntary. How do you know that they don't adhere to the product testing every 20mins?

It was Orbits birthday yesterday so today we are going on a Dog Park Crawl to some new parks

If they run testing every 20 min why does it get bagged and shipped all over the world and then do a recall after many days doesnt make sence to me Not many companys have had two recalls in such a short time frame. I don't know. I don't work for Euk. Maybe the tests they do take days to show up certain things, by which time they've already bagged it. No recalls for a food company are good, but this was a voluntary one not because it was going to poison dogs. They apparently got one positive for Salmonella so decided to recall. I'm just trying to say that another food companies might not even be testing for this, or not as often, so possibly have been sold with the same problem, but because we don't know about it, it doesn't affect us. This company did the test and got a positive so recalled.

Euk run testing on their foods every 20min in the factory. I get that its not desirable to have this, but lets face it, it's not a major problem really and atleast they found about it and decided to voluntarily recall the possibly affected lines. I'm not trying to promote Euk in any way, but atleast they're doing the quality control so often and acting on it - I wonder how many other companies do such rigorous checks?

Yep - fatty blood looks more like a strawberry milkshake. When Orbit was sick with an upset tum with what we think was from a meal a bit too fatty, we took blood to run some tests and the blood we didn't use, once cooled, had a thick layer of white fat cooled on the surface - much like what you see on a baking dish after the meat etc you've cooked is cold...white lard

I really wouldn't worry. Most dogs would encounter salmonella bacteria and not show symptoms at all. They bury meat and dig it up to eat when it's manky and gross. I think their main concern is human infection, from touching possibly infected kibble.

It's only certain Euk and Iams lines, so maybe not the ones Petstock are selling? Or maybe they don't know yet as it sounds like our Rep only found out today.

The really funny thing is that just a couple of days ago our Euk rep held one of their training days with us with regards to their Response F/P and convinced us to buy a few bags of it to keep on shelf. Now we have to pull it

Well we've just been told to pull our Euk Vet Lines off the shelf so seems the recall is occurring here. I spoke to the rep about it all and I guess what she said is true - its good to know they have the quality control to be able to pick up on this. Apparently they test their food in the factory every 20mins for these sorts of problems.

Apparently you can see this with hypothyroidism so will be interesting to see the results you get from Jean

It could be completely insignificant and just transient, in that if you took blood an hour later, might not have been there. Not uncommon to see if they've had a bit of a fatty meal in the last 12 hours. Might not be a bad idea to have it rechecked at some stage to see if you get the same thing.

I think you can look at the concept of a 'practice baby' in lots of different ways. Obviously dogs and babies are worlds apart but I don't think the OP was meaning that they treat their dog like a baby or would treat their baby like a dog. I wouldn't have thought it was that uncommon for couples to get a pet together first, not as a practice baby, but simply as a first step to sharing the responsibility of another life and meeting its specific needs and requirements together.

What an absolute joke. What on earth is wrong with our legal system, if a man can have video footage of himself performing the crime, yet be set free. Isn't the point of our legal system and courts to determine whether or not someone is guilty of a crime? The fact that someone can get off because of the way evidence was obtained, even though its quite clear and obvious they are guilty, is just absolutely absurd.

Because I don't have access to whole animals? Orbit gets about 500g of straight muscle meat in the mornings and gets about 1kg worth of meaty bones or his evening meal. Sometimes his bones have a lot of meat, other times not. I figure if he was to be in the wild killing prey, the prey would generally have a higher amount of muscle meat than edible bones, so I guess I try to replicate that at home. If I could always source his muscle meat in whole chunks that he had to shred, chew and tear, I would. But reality is that most types of muscle meat you can buy, is already minced.

Back when I was buying chicken mince from Burns, they once gave me the whole 10kg as minced breast! I was actually disappointed at the time cause I wanted minced frames ;) It was quite possibly a one off, but I didn't pay any more for it than their usual chicken mince. It was a couple of years ago now but might be worth asking if they can still ever get it

Think you might be all right with spending the extra dollars and getting what you pay for. So expensive for something some small!!!! Thanks for feedback. True but its a little life as well, with a personality, that will hopefully be around for years to come!

Tess what I mean is that it sounds like they don't actually know that the levels they have, mean immunity. The tests they've done involved exposing dogs to a certain amount of virus particles to learn about titre levels, but they don't know whether they are mimicking the number of particles they come across in the environment etc. They don't really know what is considered a 'high titre' because they are finding out new things all the time. So now, we think >1:80 is high, but further research might actually realise that it's quite low - they just don't know. I don't think they know that once they have seroconverted, they are covered for life. Take the KC vaccine for example - they know that this really only lasts about 10months. So what's different about that vaccine to not cover them for life? Keep in mind too that these vaccines don't actually prevent the disease. There are different levels of vaccines and only the Feline AIDS vaccine actually prevents the cats from contracting the disease. The Parvo vaccines still allow the disease to multiply within the dogs body but they don't become symptomatic. I'm not saying don't titre, because I still would. But just keep in mind that this is all still new and there's still a lot they don't really know, so people need to be aware that whilst the labs currently say a titre of >1:80 is sufficient, new research may come about in the future to say something different.

His name is Dr John Angles - I believe he's done a lot of work with Wei's and breeders etc

Well, the info given out to us by the AVA that suggests vaccines can be done 3 yearly, doesn't specify that this should be with the registered 3 year vaccine. We go on a case by case basis, but if a client goes 3 yearly, its with a standard, annual vaccine. I think the best information to read is the AVA - it's not biased and just gives the facts. I believe also, the subject is going to be heavily discussed and the ASAVA Conference coming up shortly, so we may see some more changes after that.

Just thought I'd give an update on this as the talk was last night. I wasn't there so can only go by the info my boss has passed onto me this morning. Basically, it sounds like they still don't really know an awful lot about the whole issue and are still learning. The Specialist who did the talk has done a lot of work on the topic and overall, likes the 3 yearly concept. Basically though, I believe a big focus was on trying to vaccinate more animals, but less often, rather than less animals, more often. Overall, they say we only vaccinate about 30% of the dog population which isn't really enough for herd immunity. There was info from studies done by Jean Dodds discussed too. He believed overall, vaccines to be quite safe and so far there is no evidence to suggest vaccines are the cause of immune mediated diseases. What they are considering, is that some dogs have highly over active immune systems, so a vaccine which in a normal dog would have no effect, is enough to trigger the abnormal dogs immune system into melt down. There was also a suggestion I believe, that dogs who continue to have a very high titre many years after vaccination, might have a more over active system than others and actually might be more prone to the IM issues. He said he titre tested the dogs with immune mediated disease rather than vacc'ing and more often than not, they seemed to have high titre levels. He also talked about titre testing and again said that they don't know a whole lot about that either yet, in terms of the results we get back and how much immunity a dog really has with those results. We currently accept >1:80 as sufficient, however they have apparently seen a dog seroconvert to levels of >1:160, so this puts a bit of a question over what the levels actually mean. There was talk about HOD and other issues in Dane and Wei puppies and he felt that avoiding vaccines around 12wk mark in Wei's is something he tries to avoid, and he prefers an early finish in their puppy shot regime. It was good to hear that a bit more than half the attending vets were vaccinating dogs triennially, however we were the only clinic doing it triennially with cats. This might mean that those vaccinating triennially are using the registered vaccines and seeing there isn't one for cats, that's why they're still doing annuals. In the end though, he mentioned that all he could really tell vets to do, was to follow the vaccine manufacturers guidelines because there won't be anyone to back them up should something go wrong, ie a dog gets parvo. I believe the notes from the talk will be up on the ARH website soon. Obviously they won't detail all of what was discussed, but there will be information on studies etc. I'm not wanting people to argue any of what I've just written - I'm mearly relaying information

Might retract what I said about titre testing giving a definite answer as to immunity. A talk last night held by an Internal Medicine Specialist said that actually they don't really know 100% that the titre levels we get back from the lab mean what we think they mean. ie. >1:80 is currently accepted as covered, however apparently they have seen dogs seroconvert levels to >1:160, so they're still learning about the whole titre level thing and it's not 100%. I will update my topic in the vacc seminar with a basic run down on the talk and when its available, give a link to the talk notes.

I would titre test. That will tell you whether or not he needs the annual. Either he has immunity or he doesn't and if he does, it shouldn't matter if there's parvo around cause and the extra vacc will make no difference anyway. Orbit only ever had his puppy shots and he's never been ill. I'm yet to titre him but he's been out and about to many places and always come to work in the clinic so I can only assume he has adequate immunity.

I think $290 is pretty high for just xrays, they should really only need a couple of views and shouldn't need sedation/GA. But at the end of the day, the pup really needs xrays. Fractures at such a young age can be relatively easy to fix as they heal so quickly, but left untreated can cause lifelong damage. We recently pinned the leg of a 16wk pup who fractured his growth plate after a larger dog rolled onto it. The dog was still happy and wagging his tail, but clearly in need of surgery! Xrays will also show up any other abnormalities, such as OCD etc. I would also suggest you consider taking out pet insurance as these types of accidents can and do happen and it would be a shame to see an animal unable to be treated due to financial restraints.