A NC family who left their kitten at a vet’s office for neutering and rabies vaccination was devastated to learn the vet had injected their pet with euthanasia solution by mistake. The rabies vaccine was reportedly left alongside a syringe containing the euthanasia drug and the vet picked up the wrong one. Oops. The kitten died despite efforts to save him. (Thanks Clarice for the link.)
A worker who was fired from the Hunterdon Humane Shelter in NJ has filed a whistleblower protection lawsuit. (Thanks Clarice.)
A 10 year old boy in Fort Worth allegedly went into a fenced yard, held down the 15 pound dog who lived there and bashed his head in with a stick until he died. He has been charged with animal cruelty. The child’s parents passed along a horrible sorrynotsorry letter to the heartbroken family. (Thanks Anne.)
The CDC has identified a new strain of rabies in a fox who bit a NM woman in April.
Based on genetic information obtained from a 35,000 year old wolf bone found in Siberia, scientists now estimate that dog domestication occurred between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago. If accurate, that would beat cat domestication by a mile.
Remember in 2007 during the massive pet food recalls when Blue Buffalo was shocked, just shocked, to find out their food contained melamine because the company knew nothing of the sort? In the current lawsuit brought by Purina, Blue Buffalo is shocked, just shocked to find out their food contains poultry by-products – the ingredient they like to slam their competitors for using. The only thing Blue Buffalo knows for sure is they are not to blame, just like in 2007.
I cannot even imagine being the parents of a sick child like this.. although I do not believe that all serial killers etc “start” with animals or that all children who pull wings from flies will kill humans.. this is a child who needs to be watched very closely.. he should NOT be in the home but in a facility .
This child has serious issues and it sounds as if his parents are simply making excuses. If they don’t take drastic action we will be hearing about him again – more animals and then possible people. Agree that this child needs to be in a facility where he can, hopefully, get the help he needs. Beating an animal to death is not normal.
I cannot imagine how awful it must be for the family of the poor dog who was beaten and killed. My heart goes out to them and to their beautiful dog. RIP
The kid is obviously disturbed. I wonder if the parent realize it and are enabling him or if they truly do not know? Someone should ask his classmates what they think about him…
That kitten suffered for nine hours because of the vet’s mistake. NINE HOURS.
Sounds like Hunterdon Humane needs to boot that director OUT.
I cannot believe that a vet could mistake euthanasia solution with a rabies vaccine unless they didn’t even look at the syringe. As far as I know (and I could be wrong) all euth solutions are dyed for this reason. At my vet it is bright pink and looks nothing like any other injectable solution in the clinic. And you don’t just leave controlled drugs hanging out on a counter mixing with everything else. Ugh. Poor kitten and kitten’s family.
That kid. OMGWTF!
Yay New Mexico.
Here’s the text of the study on ancient dogs:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900432-7
As of my access today, it’s fully available. One of the things I find fascinating about it is, I’d never known there were so many extinct European and Asian wolves.
Not really sure why you decided to pile on the vet hospital that screwed up. They owned up to it and took responsibility for their awful mistake.
It was a “mistake” that was 100% preventable and the most basic of common sense 101 protocols were clearly not in place.
Fatal plus is a highly regulated substance. It NEVER should be left lying around. Which it apparently was in this case. Only vets should be allowed to draw it into a syringe and only when they are about to use it. Apparently, in this case a tech drew it and then left it out where it got mixed up with a syringe of rabies vaccine.
They had no choice but to “own up” to it. What else can they say? The cat was suacidal and injected himself? They might not have intentionally killed him, but they are clearly very negligent in their day to day operations.
I agree with you all that they massively screwed up and will be paying for it, for a long time and cost them a lot of money. However, this blog appears to take to task those that don’t care, won’t admit their mistakes and won’t fix how it went wrong. That’s all that I am saying.