followup on the poisoned pets post

A reader who identifies herself as Robyn Heidary posted a comment on my entry yesterday about the rat-poison in the pet food problem, explaining how she came to spend $8000 on trying to cure her puppy, who unfortunately died. It's a good comment, so I want to cross-post it here. I do understand that you could get to $8000 without necessarily intending to do so -- in America, even veterinary care can get very expensive, very quickly. And it must be tough; I would be traumatized if one of my pets -- yes, very much part of the family -- had gone through what her puppy did. Her comment is copied below.

Hi...I am the college student from the post article...if I thought for one second that my puppy was going to die, I certainly would not have spent so much. She was a purebred dog and she was very dear to me. The bulk of the bill was acquired while she was in intensive care at a 24 hour vet hospital. Every day she was making serious improvement and by the day before her death, her kidneys were almost completely recovered. I kept her there because she was coming through it and I loved her more than anything. Her death came suddenly and was shocking to everyone including the doctors who were caring for her. It was likely stress that caused her to have a blood clot which sent her into cardiac arrest. If that had not happened, she probably would have recovered. She was only 6 pounds to begin with and she was down to 4 when she died...she lost a third of her body weight. Anyway, I realize the bills were excessive but I thought she was going to be okay and I could not put a price on her life. Also, I did not have an itemized bill until after she died...the last time anyone had updated me, the bill was $3000...still a lot, but not as much. We did opt to spend an additional $300 for a full necropsy because, even though there was no recall at that point, we suspected something seriously wrong had happened due to the fact that she suddenly became violently ill and she was a 100% healthy dog prior to that...her breeder has all her dogs genetically tested before breeding them. We wanted to know what killed her and now we do. I am thankful that we did this as we now have confirmation that a toxin caused her death. Anyway, I just wanted to explain why I went to such lengths. I think most pet owners would agree that their dog is a part of their family...Lucy was my baby and her life was priceless to me.