Tuesday, July 20, 2010

comfortis

comfortis is a new flea medication that is administered orally to dogs. it kills fleas within four hours thus making it something of a hit with veterinarians. my vet recommended the drug and we administered it to our three dogs on wednesday and by thursday morning, two of our dogs had vomited. as the day progressed both dogs became increasingly lethargic and depressed to the point of being nearly unresponsive. we grew worried and began some online research into comfortis(which admittedly we should have done prior to giving the drug). what we discovered was frightening. they only tested the drug for 90 days before unleashing it on the public. it has killed dogs. people report giving it to their otherwise healthy dog, only to have seizures and death occur. as the night wore on, one of our doge exhibited neurological ailments...his face began twitching and he suffered from dizzyness. as we read on, we discovered that these symptoms could get increasingly worse, dragging out for weeks at a time before the dog died or got better. i discovered that the drug elevated the liver enzymes of the dosed animals and made the executive decision to give our three dogs milk thistle to combat the toxicity. by friday morning, our dogs seemed much better and we have continued the milk thistle to maintain healthy liver enzymes and ensure that the toxicity is totally abated.

i write this as a warning. please DO NOT give your dog comfortis. some of you may have already given your dogs the drug and they tolerated it just fine but discontinue its use anyway. i read countless testimonials of people that had dosed their dogs numerous times prior, only to have them go into seizure, coma, and die. this drug is dangerous. there are non toxic ways to combat fleas and i should have gone that route. i thank God that our dogs survived. please do not put your dogs at risk.

2 comments:

judyb said...

That is horrible! Have you called the vet to let them know about this? OMG, how are the dogs now?

spoke the cat said...

yes...i called the vet but he seems to think this type of reaction is very rare. the dogs are fine now and they will never ever get anything that i do not research the hell out of first.