My parents neighbor is a large animal vet and works for the government. He was one of the veterinarians set over during the mad cow disease scare overseas. He is the first person that my parents go to for any advice on their pets.
My parents poodle had bad tarter on their teeth - a REAL problem for toy poodles - the tarter builds up easily. We were shown how to clean it off ourselves. It would pick off easily with a dental pick and sometime come off in large flakes. Cleaning your cats teeth wouldn't have needed all that special costs that they were charging.
My parents dog was put to sleep last year because she was too old. She had congestiv heart failure, asthma, was going blind, deaf, and incontinent. She was nearly 19 years old. Toward the end she required a special diet that wasn't has hard to chew. She needed this for much the same reason as an elderly person who's health is failing.
My parents cat is nearly 20 years old. She is arthritic but otherwise has very few health problems. For most of her life she was fed dry cat food alternated occaisionally with canned or table food. Now she doesn't eat the hard dry food as well and by our neighbors suggestion eats table food. Not just scraped off their plates but prepared for her specifically. I'm not sure what all they feed her but I know some of it is tuna or chicken. She is a happy and as health a cat as you can find at almost 20 yrs old.
Our cat is only 2 and mostly eats dry cat food. She regularly gets bits of real meat and plenty of tuna - he absolute favorite. She can be sound asleep somewhere in the house and ignoring the TV and kids screaming but I get out the can opener and start cranking it around a tuna can and she's there in seconds. Her vet also cares for large animals. He barely charged more than $150 for bloodwork, putting her to sleep, declawing, neuturing, and giving her her shots when we first got her. I cannot understand how $800something could be anywhere a reasonable cost for cleaning teeth. Her vet also told me that any dry food is fine - expensive often doesn't mean better. He did suggest that she at least eat some dry food because the hard chewing helps keep the tarter off her teeth. He did have food to sell in his office but said nothing to me about it. She was a kitten after all and he had kitten food there. His purpose was to ensure the health of my cat not make money. I found him by a recommendation.
It's sad that someone would use the health of an animal and the love of a pet owner as a way to make such exhorbitant money. I realize that vets need to make money to live off of but charging that much and pushing something by being dishonest is unfair and despicable in my opinion. Even if he truely believed what the company told him why would he repeat it without researching it to prove it's accuracy? That's not responsible.
Thanks for the recipie. Catrina thanks you.
