Not Fit for a Dog

The short version:

Beware of Natural Balance’s venison and brown rice dry dog food and venison and green pea dry cat food.

The long version:

I picked up some dog food for the hounds on Wednesday: Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance, since it’s all natural and not involved in the pet food recalls. I wasn’t sure what flavor to get since we had considered a few when we first stated them on it a month ago, but we were pretty sure it was venison and brown rice.

But it looked funny – the color was off – when I opened it on Thursday night. I figured we must have actually been feeding them a different flavor, probably duck and potato. Phoebe wouldn’t touch it, but Joey and Daphne ate it.

Thursday night Daphne got up to pee. Nothing unusual there, but so did Joey. That’s odd, but not that odd. It happens.

Friday morning, Phoebe still wouldn’t eat, and Daphne only picked at her food. I came home on Friday night to a house literally flooded with urine. In places it was ¼ inch deep. There are sometimes small accidents when we’re gone a long time, but always on the tile by the front door. This wasn’t an accident; this was something wrong. Plus, the water bowl was bone dry, and they don’t drink when we aren’t home.

I made a vet appointment for the next morning. That night Joey and Daphne kept getting up to go outside. In the morning, No one would eat except Joey who grudgingly ate about half his food, which was the first time since we’ve had him that he didn’t clean his bowl.

They took blood and urine at the vet and told us they’d have results on Monday.

I stopped at Petco on the way home to pick up a different flavor since I had my suspicions about the food. When I got there, every single one of the bags of Natural Balance venison and brown rice was gone. The gal at the counter told me they’d been selling it like crazy since the pet food recalls started.

All day Saturday, Daphne and Joey drank large amounts of water and went outside to pee (and chase squirrels). They both seemed run down and a bit off, but not really too bad. Occasionally Joey would vomit a clear fluid. For dinner, they had the duck and potato. They all cleaned their bowls.

Sunday, after another meal of duck and potato, things seemed mostly back to normal except that there was still way too much of the drink/urinate cycle going on. Sunday night, they each got up to go out twice.

This morning, I took Joey and Daphne to the vet. When I got to work, I Googled “natural balance venison brown rice” and got nothing. Then I tried it with Google’s blogsearch and discovered a bevy of posts from the last 24 hours about problems with Natural Balance’s venison and brown rice formula for dogs as well as one for cats (not the one Simon eats.) Itchmo seems to have been the site to break the story. Nothing in the mainstream media, of course.

Natural Balance’s site had no info. I called Petco and learned that they had been advised to remove it from the shelves for unspecified quality control reasons.

When the blood work came in, the results were consistent with the kidney issues associated with all of the pet food recalls. Daphne and Joey are now on a 24-hour kidney flush IV. They will spend the night at animal emergency so that their treatment can continue. Our awesome vets are confident that they will be okay.

We’re going to have Phoebe go through the treatment just in case, but she did have the good sense (of smell, I suppose) not to eat the food in question.

As of now, here’s what it says on the Natural Balance site:

NOTICE:
We are receiving consumer complaints regarding the Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food, and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Foods. We do not know what is wrong with the food at this time, but we have heard that animals are vomiting and experiencing kidney problems. Although the problems seem to be focused on one particular lot, as a precautionary measure, we are pulling all dates of Venison & Brown Rice Dry Dog Food and Venison & Green Pea Dry Cat Food from the shelves.

Please discontinue feeding all Venison and Brown Rice Dry Dog Food, and Venison and Green Pea Dry Cat Food.

We are working closely with the FDA.
We will update this website today, as more information comes available.

NO OTHER NATURAL BALANCE PRODUCTS ARE AFFECTED.

There seems to be something very wrong with the pet food industry right now. I don’t trust it, and this just sickens me. The thought of losing all my dogs at once…

Assuming they all come through this okay, we’ll probably start feeding them a canine-healthy blend of people food (pizza, cheese, chili dogs, beer).

I think I’m through with packaged pet food.

James Brush

James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.

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