Menu Foods: If Only We Knew Sooner

Port Huron, MI"Courtney, our Brittany Spaniel, was the epitome of health until we started her on Iams Select bites," says Bill Granger. "We thought it would be better for her..." Instead, Courtney died just about one month before the FDA issued a pet food recall.

"We always fed Courtney dry Iams, and we fed our previous dog the same brand," says Granger. "Both of them were healthy, with beautiful coats and there was never a health problem."

"We knew Courtney was getting older - she was 15 years old - so early in December, 2006 we started her on Iams Select Bite pouches. It was a moist, solid food with a gravy mix that we thought it would be easier for her to chew.

For her size and weight, Iams recommended about three pouches per day but we gave her one pouch a day with dry food. Within a week on this new diet, she started throwing up, sometimes daily. She was drinking a lot of water and eating a full bowl of food each day, mixing the dry and moist food. We took her to the vet but they didn't have any answers...

Sometimes she would throw up once every few days; she was also lethargic and slept a lot more. Courtney always greeted us at the front door but she stopped that. And she would kind of weave back and forth; she wasn't steady on her feet. We live in a two-storey house and her bed is on the second floor. She used to run up and down the stairs and run outside when she wanted to do her business, but on several occasions she fell down the stairs. We finally helped her up and down the stairs.

This went on for about a month until we took her to the vet again. She had swollen lymph glands but that was all they found. They took a biopsy and said she didn't have cancer but they couldn't figure out what was making them swollen.

When we found out about the recall we immediately stopped feeding her the pouches and put her on dry Iams only. Within 24 hours, she came back as a brand new dog! She was alert, not swaying anymore, running up and down the stairs - she back to her old self.

This went on for about two weeks. Then she went downhill. She stopped eating, drank a lot of water and got weaker. We took her back to the vet and he said she might last a few more weeks. She hadn't eaten in about five days and was throwing up again. The vet said there was nothing they could do and she wouldn't get better. We knew her quality of life was deteriorating rapidly. We had to get Courtney put down.

One thing I think was really significant was that she stopped throwing up when we stopped feeding her the pouches. In the end, we tried to feed her boiled chicken, anything that would get her to eat, but she couldn't hold anything down. Even though Courtney was 15, she still had many healthy years left, if not for Menu Foods."