(UPDATE: Thank you very much, everyone, for your thoughts and prayers. My Dane was a blessing - what a good dog he was. I am going to miss his sweet soul so much. I would love to thank you each individually tonight, but I have to go sit with my kids now, they are very sad and they need me. Thank you so much for your caring and concern.)
My Great Dane, a love of my life for 8 years, got really sick when he was at the kennel a few weeks ago. He stopped eating, stopped drinking, lost about 30 pounds in a few days, and was totally listless. We took him to the vet in kidney failure - the vet said the prognosis was poor. But my Miracle Dog perked up, got better, was eating, drinking. He was tested as having Lyme disease, and pancreatitis, but we didn't think any of this was from the dog foods that were tainted, as his brand, Pedigree dry food, was not listed.
He recovered to the astonishment of the veternarian and came home. He ate well for 2 or 3 days, Then, after a few days, he got worse. He was gagging, throwing up blood. Very sick and listless again. I thought the antibiotic might be bothering his stomach, so I stopped it. He got better again. And then, last night, he got into his old dog food and ate some, and was very sick again this morning.
To the vet ($2000 later, which is a lot of money for us) and his infection was worse (probably due to the 24 hours off the antibiotic) his red blood cell count was way down, his white blood cell count was way up, he was not eating, they were running more and more tests, my husband and I thought he was suffering. We were suffering. I couldn't take it anymore. My husband couldn't take it anymore. We couldn't watch him get worse. We couldn't get him up, we had to force him to go out, he just wanted to lie down and sleep. He was almost comatose.
We put him to sleep this afternoon. To put a pet to sleep is so painful. There are always questions - could we have done more, should we have tried another course, did we do everything we could, and, was he suffering? When we heard about the pet food scare, we had looked through the list of contaminated food and our brand was never mentioned. After the diaries today, though, and the FDA alert which states that 44% of the wheat gluten has melamine in it, I realized they were not telling us the truth. I went to the grocery store this afternoon, and looked at the bags, and Pedigree, Iams, and a bunch of other dog foods are on the shelves and they have wheat gluten in them. So beware. Please call you vet if your brand of food has wheat gluten in it. It may save you the pain of putting your dog in a dirt hole in the ground as your kids all cry.
I am going to go hang with my kids, so I won't be here on the site tonight. I just wanted to caution everyone that we don't think they are telling us the whole truth and to be careful what you feed your pets still.