Nylabone Products is recalling some Puppy Starter Kits because the chew toys may be contaminated with Salmonella.
Routine testing by the company revealed the presence of Salmonella in one lot of 1.69 oz. packages of the Puppy Starter Kit, according to a press release.
Salmonella can affect animals as well as people who handle the contaminated treats. The symptoms for both people and animals include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever. If you or your pet experiences these symptoms after handling or eating the recalled product, see a doctor or veterinarian.
The recalled Puppy Starter Kits were distributed nationwide and to Canada.
The product comes in a 1.69 oz. package, with the lot number (LT) 21935, UPC code 0-18214-81291-3 and expiration date 3/22/18, which can all be found on the back of the package.
If you bought one of the recalled Puppy Starter Kits, do not give the chew toys to your puppy. For a full refund or replacement, send the product to:
Nylabone Puppy Starter Kit Recall
c/o Central Life Sciences
1501 E. Woodfield Rd., Suite 200W
Schaumburg, IL 60173
For more information about the recall, visit the Nylabone website, email info@nylabone.com or call 855-273-7527, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time.
The contact information was updated April 29, 2015.
Two women wearing green uniforms showed up on the doorstep of Caesar Aguilar in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles April 14, telling him they were with the LAPD Animal Cruelty Task Force (ACTF). They said the ACTF had received multiple complaints that his dog, Fannie, was being neglected. They handed him an official ACTF flyer and demanded to confiscate Fannie so she could be examined for signs of neglect or abuse.
Aguilar did as they asked, and the women drove off with his dog.
Knowing he had not been neglecting Frannie, a small, white dog who appears to be a Maltese mix, Aguilar called the number on the flyer. The ACTF answered, but told him the department had no record of complaints or knowledge of the confiscation.
An LAPD news release describes the suspects as an Hispanic woman and a white woman. Both appeared to be in their mid-30s, about 5 feet tall and weighing about 140 pounds.
The ACTF is concerned that other pet parents may be victims of this scam.
Scott Stephen, a neighbor of Aguilar, seems to feel the same way I do: Good luck taking our dogs away from us.
“I love this dog to death, so I probably couldn’t be separated even with physical force,” he told CBS Los Angeles. “But that’s certainly a challenge, especially when someone looks like an authority figure.”
If someone comes to your door claiming to be an officer, the LAPD advises that you ask for identification, and examine it closely to see if it is official. If you’re still suspicious, ask for additional proof. And if you suspect someone is impersonating an officer, call 911 immediately.
Anyone with information about the dog thieves is asked to call LAPD’s Rampart Area Burglary Detectives at 213-484-3400 or 877-527-3247. To leave an anonymous tip, call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.
Luna, a 2-year-old Golden Retriever, chewed open a pack of Ice Breakers sugarless gum Monday night and ate its entire contents. One day later, Luna had to be euthanized due to the severe liver damage she suffered.
“She was like our first child,” Luna’s grief-stricken dog mom, Samantha Caress of Glenwood City, Wisc., told KARE.
Luna had found the gum when Caress and her boyfriend, Jordan Pellett, were not at home. When she appeared to be sick Tuesday morning, they rushed her to an animal emergency hospital and left her there for treatment.
The hospital called the couple a few hours later. “They said her blood came back and it wasn’t good,” Caress told KARE.
Medical care for Luna’s liver failure would have cost $20,000, which the couple could not afford. “And they said it was still only a 25-percent chance that she would live from it,” Caress said, crying. “We just didn’t want her to suffer, so we had to put her down.”
Xylitol Is Extremely Toxic for Dogs
Xylitol, a sugar alcohol used as a sweetener, is highly toxic for dogs. If ingested, even small amounts can cause hypoglycemia and liver failure. It is a common ingredient in sugarless gum — as well as sugar-free candy and baked goods, along with cough drops, vitamins, toothpaste, dental floss and other common household products.
If xylitol is one of the first five ingredients listed for a product, it is really important to keep the item out of your dog’s reach, as Caress and her family tragically discovered.
“As little as a couple of pieces of gum can result in severe hypoglycemia, a life-threatening drop in blood sugar and actually liver failure,” Dr. Justine Lee, of the Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota, told KARE.
According to the ASPCA, other artificial sweeteners, such as sorbitol and aspartame, will not cause life-threatening liver failure or hypoglycemia, but may cause diarrhea.
Dr. Lee advised pet parents to add contact information for their veterinarian and ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control (888-426-4435) to their phones in case of an emergency.
The symptoms of xylitol poisoning include vomiting, staggering and seizures. Your dog may not show these symptoms until hours after eating the item, when it may be too late. So, if you know your dog has digested xylitol, take him to the vet immediately. Don’t induce vomiting unless your vet instructs you to do so.
To honor their beloved dog, Caress and Pellet have created the Luna’s Gift of Hope account on GoFundMe.com. Donations will go to CoCo’s Heart Dog Rescue in Hudson, Wisc.
“Our goal right now is set at pretty high at $20,000. It is just what it would have cost to try to save Luna,” Caress told KARE. “So, if we could raise all those proceeds to help them save other dogs, that’d be great.”
“It really is a miracle that God gave me back Lucy right before her birthday, and if she could talk, we’d be able to write a book about it,” Rebecca Felix, the 4-year-old miniature Dachshund’s dog mom, told the Wichita Eagle today.
Earlier this month, Felix left her home in Derby, Kansas, to take care of an ill family member. Her husband stayed at home with Lucy and Thor, their Jack Russell Terrier/Chihuahua mix.
When her husband came home from work April 3, Lucy was nowhere to be found. There were no holes under the fence through which Lucy could have escaped.
“I was devastated,” Felix told the Wichita Eagle. “Our assumption was that she got out, but we couldn’t find anywhere where she could have gotten out.”
For 10 days, the couple circled their yard, calling Lucy’s name but getting no response. Then Thor began leading them to the air-conditioning unit on the side of the house. The couple couldn’t figure out why.
Three days later, they heard a soft bark coming from under the concrete slab supporting the unit. When Felix’s husband played a dog-whistle app on his phone, they heard another weak bark.
Digging under the slab, Felix’s husband was able to see Lucy’s nose. She opened her eyes when he called her name.
The Dachshund had dug under the house, and then had somehow managed to dig a 4-foot tunnel before she became stuck under the concrete slab.
Firefighters and police officers soon arrived and were able to pull Lucy out. Veterinarians at a local animal emergency hospital said she was dehydrated and starved, and had severe corneal ulceration due to all the dirt that had been in her eyes. She was fed chicken and rice, which she ate “ravenously,” according to the Wichita Eagle.
Lucy is recovering and being treated by vets at Rainbow Valley Veterinary Clinic. “We can’t believe there was no organ failure,” Dr. Kelly Miller told the Wichita Eagle. “Fourteen days without water, you expect the kidneys to have not survived through that. She somehow managed to make it. It’s amazing.”
Felix agrees. “It had to be divine intervention,” she told the Wichita Eagle.
Other breeders advised Karen Riddle of Greenville, S.C., to euthanize a white German Shepherd puppy who was born without a right front paw.
No way. Riddle realized the 9-week-old puppy would be the perfect companion for a child with a disability — and she was right.
“I decided to call Shriners Hospital for Children,” Riddle told GreenvilleOnline. One of its patients happened to be 3-year-old Sapphyre Johnson, who had been born with a birth defect that left her without some toes and fingers. She had been at the hospital since she was 3 months old, undergoing multiple surgeries.
“They don’t know what caused it,” Sapphyre’s mom, Ashley Johnson, told GreenvilleOnline. “But she had just two really long toes on each foot. And when she was 1, we had them amputated so she could be fitted for prosthetics.”
When Sapphyre was shown a picture of the puppy, “she looked at it for a moment, and she said, ‘That’s my puppy. He’s just like me,'” Shriners child life specialist Elaine Hardin told GreenvilleOnline. “In the future, I could see Sapphy at her first show-and-tell in school, and she could bring in her dog and explain about her dog and herself. Everybody loves dogs, and they’ll want to know about her dog that’s special like her.”
On Monday, Sapphyre was able to leave the hospital for her home in Tennessee with new prosthetic legs and the new puppy, who will be her therapy dog. The Johnson family named him Lt. Dan, after the character in “Forrest Gump” who loses his legs in the Vietnam War.
“It was awesome yesterday,” Riddle told ABC News Tuesday. “We said, ‘Sapphyre show him your feet,’ and, oh boy, she threw off her prosthetics and her socks, and said, ‘Look!’ Then Lt. Dan put his paw up at the exact same time.”
Ashley Johnson told GreenvilleOnline she thought what Riddle had done was “wonderful.”
Also wonderful: Shriners Hospital for Children, which made Sapphyre’s prosthetic legs, has promised to make a prosthetic paw for Lt. Dan when he’s fully grown.
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