Dogged Blog

Should we worry about canine influenza?

Is canine influenza just another one of the many causes of kennel cough, or something more serious?



The disease only emerged in dogs for the first time in 2004 when it was identified as the cause of serious respiratory disease in racing Greyhounds in Florida. Since then, we've learned more about it, including a recent article in Veterinary Microbiology that suggests it's both more contagious and more serious than first believed.



From my SFGate.com column today:

"We know that canine influenza, a new disease for many veterinarians, is often under- or misdiagnosed because clinical signs are similar to other respiratory diseases," said Dr. NallaKannu Lakshmanan, one of the study's authors and a researcher for [Intervet, the company that manufactures the CIV vaccine]. "Our research further suggests that infected dogs may have serious lung damage that goes undetected because it does not manifest as pneumonia."



In other words, there is evidence that the disease damages even the lungs of dogs who don't develop full-blown pneumonia -- damage sometimes missed because of the lack of obvious symptoms.



Additionally, the virus appears to be more easily transmitted than some of the other causes of canine cough.



According to Dr. Michael Moyer, director of shelter animal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, 100 percent of dogs exposed to the virus are infected by it.



"Around 20 percent of them won't have any noticeable symptoms," he said. "But they're probably shedding the virus, which can infect other dogs. And we can't do anything to prevent it because we don't know those dogs are sick."



Moyer works full-time at UPenn and also owns a private veterinary practice in Bethlehem, Pa., but he's also done some speaking on canine influenza at events sponsored by Intervet.



And the company, as the manufacturer of a vaccine for the disease, clearly has an interest in dog owners believing the worst about the virus, so like all cases of "science by press release," what they have to say should be taken with the appropriate amount of sodium chloride.



But it's probably true that the disease is under-diagnosed, and that it can be somewhat more serious than many of the other causes of canine respiratory disease, all of which have been around for a long time.



Emerging diseases are often more deadly than established ones, because the species hasn't yet adapted to resist or tolerate the pathogen.



Moreover, we don't know much about new diseases by virtue of the fact that they're just that: new. The first few years after a disease emerges, or crosses to a new species, usually involve a period of assumptions followed by corrections of those assumptions.

Read the entire article here.



Photo: Gina's Woody, who survived CIV when he was a puppy.

Can veterinarians and pet owners trust compounding pharmacies?

With all the bad press veterinary compounding pharmacies got in the last couple of years, you'd think they'd want to be very careful to preserve the trust of veterinarians and pet owners. But a recent experience with what I thought was a trustworthy company has made me wonder if they're going to be able to survive pending regulatory crackdowns.



My Borzoi, Kyrie, has a slight problem with urinary incontinence. A couple of times a week I give her the medication phenylpropanolamine (PPA), a decongestant that was removed from the human over-the-counter market because of a possible association with an increased risk of stroke. It is also a drug that can be used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.



She's allergic to the flavoring in the chewable form of the drug, so my veterinarian prescribed an unflavored compounded version. The pharmacy she recommended is one I'd used for another medication for another dog, and it was one that had come highly recommended by a number of veterinarians I knew and trusted.



That mattered to me because there are some pet pharmacies that don't deserve that trust, that apply pressure to veterinarians to approve refills and prescriptions when the pet hasn't been seen recently -- or even skipping that pesky "prescription" step entirely. I didn't want to trust Kyrie's health to a company like that.



It turns out, though, that I did. Last week, I called in a refill for Kyrie's PPA. She rarely needs it, so the refill had expired last December -- nearly 9 months earlier. I left the refill request on their automated system, and said that I wasn't sure if they needed me to call my vet to have the refill authorized, or if they would call her, but I left my number in case there was a problem.



Two days later, I have Kyrie's meds. It just so happened I saw my vet the next day, when Rawley needed a cut pad looked at. I thanked her for authorizing the refill so quickly, and she gave me a strange look. "I didn't hear anything from the pharmacy," she said.



She went digging, and not only had no one at the practice authorized it, no one was asked to authorize it. In conversations she had with the pharmacy, it turns out that their representative had authorized the refill him or herself, and tacked on two more refills just for the heck of it.



Kyrie is 11 and a half years old, and while she's pretty healthy, she's had some issues. That nameless, faceless voice on the phone has never laid eyes on her, let alone examined her, nor, presumably, is qualified to prescribe medication in any case.



I assumed, trusted, that my dog was being given this refill because my veterinarian, who had recently seen and examined her, had authorized it. I don't want "no questions asked" refills of potentially harmful drugs. I don't want to give my money to a pharmacy that does business that way.



The person my veterinarian spoke to at the pharmacy insisted they didn't do business that way normally. They're well-thought-of in the veterinary world. They value their reputation. It was, she assured my vet, a fluke.



But my veterinarian's trust is shattered, and so is mine. Not only in this one company, but in all veterinary compounding pharmacies. Did someone there think it was okay because it was "just a dog"? Is business suffering, so there's been a slackening of the rules in the service of the bottom line? Did they simply fail to train their employees in how to comply with the law?



I don't know. I do know that the next time I need a compounded medication, I'm not going to know where to turn. And that's going to hurt not just this one company, but the entire industry.



Compounding pharmacies need to clean up their act or the FDA won't just clean it up for them, it will do what many people believe it wants to do anyway and shut them down. And that's going to hurt dogs like Kyrie who need a medication in a form not otherwise available.



Photo: Kyrie gets comfy.

' Hoarding ' and ' warehousing ' arise from traditional, not no-kill, shelter models

The real difference between the no-kill movement and the traditional sheltering model is that the no-kill movement is based on the belief that people are the solution to the death of animals in shelters, while traditional sheltering is based on the belief that people are the cause of the problem.

Take the frequent accusations of  "warehousing" and "hoarding" that are leveled at no-kill advocates by their opponents.

"Hoarding" is properly a mental illness and has nothing to do with sheltering models. In these debates, however, the term is used to cover a much broader range of behavior, typically to describe rescue situations in which an individual or a rescue group fosters or adopts far more animals than can be well-cared for, sometimes with disastrous results.

The same activity when engaged in by shelters is typically termed "warehousing," the long-term sheltering of animals by organizations that refuse to kill healthy and treatable homeless pets, even when they're stacked in cages to the ceiling.

But the truth is, there is no shelter model less likely to tolerate, encourage or engender warehousing and hoarding than the no-kill movement.

If that seems hard to follow, look at it this way: The fundamental philisophical difference between no-kill and traditional shelter and animal control models is not really that one group believes in using killing as a tool of animal population control and the other does not.

Indeed, in many cases, advocates of traditional sheltering would be outraged to have it said they "believe in" animal population control killing. They may perform it. They may believe it's inescapable. But they don't advocate it (with a few truly pathological exceptions *cough* PETA *cough*).

It's their attitude towards the pet-owning members of their community that sets them apart. The traditional shelter model is based on blaming the public; the no kill movement expects them to roll up their sleeves and help.

That's why the set of policies and programs that comprise the "No-kill Equation" include so many community-based elements -- aggressive recruitment of foster homes and volunteers; high-octane adoption outreach and marketing; improved customer service; public relations and goodwill-building.

In fact, it's why the no-kill movement is based on a set of programs that have to be implemented by shelters and animal control agencies, rather than some plan to educate or legislate people into better behavior some time in the future.

It's also why the no-kill movement doesn't use negative messaging in its shelter managment model. It doesn't use slogans like "Don't breed and buy while shelter dogs die" or "Until there are none, adopt one." It doesn't demonize "irresponsible owners" or "greedy breeders."

Instead, it uses principles of retailing to improve the image of shelter pets and ramp up adoptions, relying on advertising, discounts, special events, and retail basics like changing hours and making sure the adoption area is well-lit, clean and pleasant.

It's the traditional shelter model, not the no-kill model, that's based on the idea that until society has a moral makeover in how it views animals we'll never stop the killing of pets in shelters.

And it's the message that "people are to blame" that directly leads to the problem of "warehousing" and "hoarding" by rescuers, because it provides a basis for a belief that the animals are better off being held even in crowded or outright bad circumstances than "out there" taking a chance with the evil that lurks in the hearts of people.

That is the philisophical underpinning of refusing to do aggressive adoptions and to keep animals flowing out faster than they're flowing in.

I've seen this over and over hanging out on one of the Internet's hottest spots for anyone following the no-kill movement, the No Kill Nation Facebook page, currently at nearly 80,000 members. It's there that I see an almost daily culture clash between no-kill movement activists and people who "liked" the page because they don't want animals to die, but who aren't familiar with the philosophy and assumptions of the movement.

These are the people who sob, 'WE HAVE TO STOP THE KILLING," but  don't have a plan to do so beyond imploring irresponsible people to become responsible (hint: not gonna happen) and contemplating laws and penalties aimed at forcing compliance with their version of responsibility.

No-kill activists are all about the programs and the policies, all about working with communities and not demonizing anyone, about extreme adoption, and all that makes little or no sense to those who come, driven by a burning desire to save the animals (as are we all), but with an equally burning desire to punish the people. And so we clash.

It is not shelters that are running special Arbor Day promotions -- adopt a pet, get a free tree! -- that are trapped in some nightmare of warehousing, and it's not rescuers who waive fees and do "two-fers" who turn into some kind of crazy-ass angels of mercy to the pets in their "care."

When you decide people can't be trusted with animals, even rescuers with an hysterical over-identification with the animals they're working with -- even those who border on being mentally ill -- will fall into the trap of thinking that animals are "better off dead," or that there are "fates worse than death."

It's the people who believe their fellow humans are too bad, too irresponsible, too evil to be trusted with a pet who find themselves on the razor's edge of hoarding and warehousing, who believe that death is better than a life wherein something bad might someday happen, who think that killing a young, healthy cat is better than adopting her out to a poor family who might be unable to pay for medical care she might someday need.

That is the "hoarding" and "warehousing" mentality, and it's also the "we kill them because we have no choice" mentality. They belong to the same philisophical family, one that puts the blame on people and is waiting for the day we're all singing the pet version of "Kumbaya" in perfect harmony before we can stop killing healthy and treatable homeless animals.

' Unwanted ' : It ' s not for animals anymore

Maybe I'm just obsessed with language because I'm a writer. But I don't think so. I believe that the language we use to talk about animal welfare and issues both shapes and reflects the greater societal view of animals.



From the insanity of referring to killing perfectly healthy or treatable animals as "euthanasia" as long as it happens in a shelter, to calling places where animals are routinely killed in large numbers a "shelter" in the first place, to the debate over terms like "no-kill" and "high-kill" and "pet over-population" and all the other semantic battles we engage in as we try to save the lives of animals, words are tools and sometimes weapons.



Attorney and animal advocate Ryan Clinton, founder of FixAustin.org, blogged today about another problematic word used to talk about animals:

[T]he animal-welfare cliché I hate the most—the one that gets under my skin more than any other—is the unquestioned use of the term “unwanted” to describe sheltered animals, especially litters of puppies and kittens.  Its use is so insulting, so damaging, so disparaging, so downright incorrect, that I propose we ban it altogether.



[....]



And finally, consider this:  why on earth would we expect the public to embrace our cause and adopt a shelter animal if we keep calling happy, healthy, and adoptable puppies and kittens unwanted?  Do you really think that helps?  How many businesses do you know that inherently and publicly devalue their product?  No other industry does, and we shouldn’t either.  It’s crazy, it’s unhelpful, and it doesn’t make sense.



They are wanted.  Every single one of them.

I never use the term "unwanted" to describe homeless pets. It carries a universe of meaning with it -- including the whole world view that blames everything on "irresponsible pet owners," along with "throw-away pets" and "dumping animals at shelters."



If you find yourself using a term like this, think hard about it. Make sure that the meanings that trail along after the word, the implied universe that word arose from, match the message you're trying to give.



Photo: "'Unwanted?' Moi?"

It 's time to try funding spay/neuter instead of mandating it

Mandatory spay/neuter has been shot down twice now in the state of California. Everyone here knows I see that as a good thing, since mandatory spay/neuter has led to increased shelter intake and killing everywhere it's been implemented.

Others, however, are in favor of it because they believe that forcing the sterilization of pets is the only way to end the killing of dogs and cats in shelters.

We're both very, very sure the other side is wrong, and while obviously I think the facts are on my side, it's also a fact that many supporters of mandatory spay/neuter are genuinely convinced it will help animals and have the best of intentions.

So, since the state legislature is out of session and there's no bill pending right now, I thought maybe we could try an experiment, at least until the lawmakers come back to Sacramento. From my San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com column this week:

Let's believe, or pretend to believe, that however we feel about mandatory spay/neuter laws, we all want to save animals' lives. The question is, how do we do it?

I have an idea: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has reported that almost all pet dogs are already spayed and neutered. Peer-reviewed research published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association has found that the same is true for cats.

However, that's not the case for those dogs and cats owned by people making less than $35,000 a year, a group for whom spay/neuter rates are around half of what they are in households with higher incomes.

Of those low-income pet owners, most have indicated they'd like to get their pets spayed or neutered if the services were affordable or free. The other sticking point is that the services be accessible to people and pets for whom transportation is a problem. (Have you ever tried to take a dog on a bus? Ever tried to bring home a groggy dog who just had major surgery on a bus?)

It seems obvious that this group of low-income pet owners is the most effective target for spay/neuter efforts. All that's missing is the money to pay for the surgery and transportation.

It just so happens there are two existing programs in California designed to fund spay/neuter services for low income pet owners. And here's the kicker: One of them was spearheaded by Judie Mancuso, the driving force behind both the failed mandatory spay/neuter laws, and the other by Concerned Dog Owners of California, part of the successful effort to stop those laws from passing.

Mancuso's program is California's spay/neuter license plate. Sponsored by the California Veterinary Medical Board, the program charges a fee for a special vehicle license advocating the spaying and neutering of pets, and uses the money to fund low-cost spay/neuter through municipal shelters throughout the state. The plate costs $40 if sequentially numbered, $78 if personalized.

CDOC's program is the Shelter Spay/Neuter Fund, which animal lovers can donate to by ticking off a box on their state income tax return forms. The money is used to subsidize spay-neuter services for pet dogs and cats.

Here's the problem: Both programs are in trouble:

The state won't begin issuing license plates until orders have been placed for a minimum of 7,500 plates; as of Sept. 13, only 1,512 had been received.

For its part, the tax form donation check-off requires an annual donation level of $250,000 to maintain the program; but the fiscal year that ended in July only saw donations of around $175,000.

Because there's intense competition for access to these funding methods, unpopular programs are highly vulnerable. These two programs had the misfortune of launching during an economic downturn that's put the squeeze on charitable contributions, and now both are in serious jeopardy.

We could, instead of one side chasing down the path of government mandate yet again while the other side mobilizes to stop them yet again, throw our efforts into supporting whichever one of these programs seems more worthy (or, for those still on the fence, both!).

If both sides really do want to see fewer pets killed in shelters, this is pretty much a win/win. These are, after all, pet owners who want to sterilize their pets, but haven't been able to afford it.

In fact, how could anyone who claims to want to help pets and to care about low income pet owners be against this idea?

Read the complete column here.

Get yer pet food marketing messages disguised as blog comments here

Dear Pet Food Marketing Minions.



On behalf of all of us on the Pet Connection team, let me say how honored we are that we're apparently the go-to spot for your astroturf campaign for and against various brands of pet food. Our most recent post about a possible problem with a pet food has attracted an amazing number of posts all startlingly similar in the story they tell.



All these posters have pets who have recently been eating Blue Buffalo and become sick, and gotten well when switched back to their previous food.



This is a fascinating phenomenon, all the more so because the brand of the previous food is different for all these pets. Which tells me that someone -- undoubtedly a highly-qualified veterinary nutritionist with a PhD also in epidemiology and, I presume, an MBA -- has created a "one-size-fits-all" blog comment that can be used equally well by any and all pet food companies to feast on the carcass of whichever one of their competitors is currently going through a recall or other business catastrophe.



I deleted SIX of these posts BEFORE BREAKFAST this morning. (Granted, I am on California time, but still.) I just nuked three more. I let one through with the brand name redacted because I want to respond to something in it. I don't know how many have been caught by Gina or David.



Just do us one favor: Go back to your corporate overlords and tell them it took us 4.3 seconds to figure it out, and we did so because there were 3,456,876 of you all saying the same thing.



And here's a suggestion for them, free of charge: Cancel your social media contract and spend the money making your food safer.



Love and kisses,



The Pet Connection Team

Blue Buffalo dog food may be linked to serious illness

The Veterinary Information Network (VIN) News Service reported last week that a serious illness in dogs may be linked to the food they've been eating:

In message board discussions, veterinarians have revealed cases of hypercalcemia secondary to vitamin D toxicosis occurring in dogs that eat a single brand of dry pet food: Blue Buffalo Wilderness Diet, chicken flavor. In each of the cases, veterinarians report that dogs’ conditions have improved after switching brands.



So far, nothing concrete has identified a causal relationship between the food and illnesses in dogs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while reportedly alerted to adverse events tied to the food, has not prompted a recall, though the VIN News Service has been unable to reach officials with the regulatory agency directly.



Officials with Wilton, Conn.-based Blue Buffalo report that “tens of thousands of dollars” and hundreds of hours have been spent analyzing various batches of dog food, including samples from bags directly linked to specific cases of dogs testing positive for hypercalcemia and vitamin D toxicity.



Richard MacLean, vice president of business affairs, says one thing is certain: Test results thus far have shown nothing unusual about the product’s formulation; amounts of calcium and vitamin D, in particular, are within the company’s specifications and well below levels that might be considered toxic. The company’s focus has been on Blue Buffalo Wilderness Chicken Recipe, manufactured in April 2010 with a best-used-by date of July 2011. Vitamin D toxicity, or hypervitaminosis D, induces bone loss and abnormally high serum calcium levels, which could result in kidney stones and the calcification of organs like the heart and kidneys if left untreated.

As detective stories go, this is a pretty intriguing one. Veterinarians have been putting the pieces together -- one vet's own dog was among those affected.



Blue Buffalo is paying for diagnostic tests on the sick dogs as well as agressively testing the food, for which they're to be commended. Still, I'd like to see a pre-emptive recall even before the tests are done.



You can read the whole story here. And if you're not already following the VIN News Service, you should make it a habit. I missed this story because it broke on the day I moved, but they do some of the best investigative work in the entire veterinary field.

Eleven steps to get to No-Kill

Today, most places in this country have a public policy of killing dogs and cats who are otherwise healthy or treatable but have no homes. Death is considered an acceptable tool of animal population management.



There is a movement that aims to take that tool off the table, that says that killing pets simply because they have no homes is wrong and that we can do better. It's called, logically enough, the No-Kill Movement.



Some people think taking killing off the table is a nice idea but that it can never happen. It's a fantasy, or a dream, but can never be a reality. And so they continue to ignore or even support the epidemic of Fatal-Plus that's taking the lives of America's homeless pets.



But they're wrong. I know they're wrong because communities across the United States, including Reno, Nev., Tompkins County, NY, and Charlottesville, Virg., have already ended the use of killing as a tool of animal population control. They've managed to save more than 90 percent of the dogs and cats coming into their shelter systems over a period of years.



Those communities, and many others like them, no longer kill dogs and cats who either have no medical or behavior problems or whose problems can be treated. Instead, they find them homes.



Every single one of those communities has done this the exact same way, using the same 11-step program developed by Nathan Winograd of the No-Kill Advocacy Center. This simple video lays them out in black, white, and a few other colors:







For the video-impaired or reluctant:

1. Feral cat trap-neuter-release programs

2. High-volume, low-cost spay/neuter

3. Working with rescue groups

4. Foster care programs

5. Comprehensive adoption programs

6. Helping people keep their pets with pet retention programs

7. Medical and behavior programs

8. Good public relations and community involvement

9. Working with volunteers

10. Pro-active redemptions

11. A compassionate director

Yes, those things can be hard. But it's a straightforward road map and it works. Stop letting people say it's impossible.



Note: I do some freelance writing for Maddie's Fund, an organization dedicated to making America a No-Kill Nation.

How to rock your pet adoption listings

Have you ever wondered if there's some secret to writing successful adoption pleas for a homeless animal? There definitely is.

It's not to make the animal seem as victimized as possible. It doesn't involve making people feel pity or guilt or horror. It definitely doesn't have anything to do with ominous or frantic warnings that the pet will be killed in horrible ways at an uncaring animal control facility if someone doesn't step up and adopt him.

Some of the research done for the Ad Council's Shelter Pet Project (which I do some work for) revealed that the main reason people who start out wanting to adopt a pet from a shelter don't carry through on that plan is that they're worried that the pets in shelters come with too much baggage, and have too many health and behavior problems to fit into their families.

PetSmart Charities also researched obstacles to adoption, and while they broke down their data into categories that seem designed to drive a pet overpopulation message rather than one promoting pet adoption, if you look at their findings, they're actually quite similar to the Shelter Pet Project's.

While the inability to find the kind of pet (17 percent) or breed (13 percent) desired are the number one and two reasons people fail to adopt, for a total of 30 percent, that total is misleading.

The other ten reasons given for not adopting, which add up to 68 percent, are all perceived problems or concerns about shelter adoptions in general -- health and behavior problems of shelter pets, poor customer service or other bad experiences at shelters, etc.

So if fears about either shelter pets or shelters themselves are the main obstacles to adoptions among those who have indicated they'd like to adopt a pet, it stands to reason that emphasizing the negative things about an individual pet or the facility where that pet is housed will do nothing but make those obstacles worse.

That's because relentless negative messages make the vast majority of people shut down and avoid the negativity instead of taking a desired action. Or rather, such messages are often very effective for getting people to donate money, but are much less so in getting them to walk into a shelter and adopt a pet to live with their kids.

Even worse, those negative messages risk not only turning most adopters away from that pet, but turning them away from the idea of adopting altogether.

What does work to get people to consider adoption is seeing the pet as an individual, with his or her own personality and story. The pet doesn't need to be perfect, and certainly shelter and rescue workers shouldn't hide illnesses, potential problems or special needs from prospective adopters.

But don't lead with the animal's problems. Don't start out talking about how abused the dog was, or how the cat was "dumped" or "abandoned." Don't castigate the previous owners or begin your description talking about the pet's health or behavior challenges, if any.

After all, when we fall in love with people, we do it on the basis of the things about them we find appealing. When we later learn about their flaws, we usually take them in stride.

Shouldn't we give prospective adopters a chance to fall in love before hitting them over the head with the sob story? Can't we devote, I don't know, a paragraph to the things that make that animal special and wonderful before we mention the dog's heartworm infection or the fact that the cat doesn't like men?

Last weekend I was hanging out with a cute little puppy who needs a home. She's safe in foster care, and she's healthy and has a great personality, so there's really no "sob story" here, and no problems, unless the fact that she's a pit bull counts as a "problem."

I was snuggling with this little girl outside of Whole Foods Market in Sacramento, getting my chin kiss-chewed and marveling at her pretty face and sucking in that wonderful puppy breath. She was a feisty little thing in her neon pink collar, and I started making her dance around my lap singing the greatest hits of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts... "Bad Reputation," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" -- you know the songs.

"Should I name her Joan Jett?" her foster mom, Jennifer Fearing, asked, laughing at me.

I had a different idea.

"I used to have a pit mix named Lita," I said. "She was named after Lita Ford, the guitar player in Joan Jett's first band, The Runaways. You could name her Lita because she's a perfect rocker chick puppy, and in honor of my Lita, too."

And so it was done. A pretty little pup in a pink collar became a bad-ass rock 'n' roll pit bull puppy destined to make some bad-ass rock 'n' roll chick a happy dog mom.

It may not be an image that appeals to you, but it's exactly how you give a pet a personality. And while of course Lita is perfect, even if she does turn out to have a few flaws, well... if you like those rocker babes, you won't care. You'll just love her even more.

And if you or someone you know are, in fact, in the market for a bad ass rocker girl pit pup, let me know in the comments!

Photos of Lita the puppy taken by Jennifer Fearing, her foster mom. Photo of my Lita taken by me. And the photo of Lita Ford is by Shadowgate and  is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Iams recalls weight control cat food for salmonella

The FDA announced yet another salmonella-related pet food recall, this time of an Iams cat food intended to help control weight and hairballs in indoor cats. From the FDA press release (and no, it's not on the Iams website yet, or if it is, I sure can't find it):

The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is voluntarily recalling a small number of bags from a specific lot of one of its dry cat food products due to potential salmonella exposure.

No illnesses have been reported, and no other Iams pet food products are involved.



Only one code date is affected by this announcement:

Product Name	Version	Code Date	UPC Code
Iams Indoor Weight Control with Hairball Care dry cat food	6.8 lb bag	02304173 (B1-B6)	1901403921

The company successfully traced and retrieved nearly all of the affected product and estimates that fewer than 60 bags from this production run may have been purchased by consumers.



This production run was sold through a single retailer in the following states:  Illinois, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.



Consumers who have purchased one of these few bags with the specific code date listed above should discard it.  For a product replacement or refund, please call P&G toll-free at 800-862-3332 (Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM EST).

The full release is here.