After Encounter with Speeding Cab, Husky Needed Help from Angel Fund
One hot day in July, Nicole Espina took her Husky, Vasily, out for a walk in Mar Vista. “It was really, really hot,” she said. “Normally we would walk for half an hour to an hour. But I didn’t want him to get heat stroke so we went back home early.
“Usually, when I get to to my front door, I unleash him and he goes in. But this time, he pulled a little Houdini on me and he ran out toward the street.”
A taxi was speeding down Venice Blvd. near her home at the time. “The driver was looking down at his phone, one of my neighbors said, and he didn’t see my dog,” Nicole said. Vasily lost what was a terrible mismatch with the cab. The major physical problem was a broken leg, she said, “but the encounter also has had a heavy mental toll, too.
“He’s crying every day,” she said in in a recent interview. “The first few days Vasily was home, you could tell that he wasn’t the same anymore. When I would take him out, he was traumatized by what had happened there [in the street near her front door].
She said that Vasily “has been shaking, quivering and crying and he’s in pain. He’s suffering. A lot of my friends are like, what are you going to do? and I honestly don’t know what I can do.”
Nicole has been staying at home most of the time because of her dog’s trauma. She said that he also has had sores from an infection, although Dr. Wendy Brooks, who treated Vasily at Mar Vista Animal Hospital, told Nicole that she expected him to recover soon.
Nicole who is not working full time, was short of cash and the hospital suggested applying for help to Angel Fund. Nicole did so and received a grant matched by the hospital. That was a huge help.
“I’m so grateful for Angel Fund,” she said. “Without it, I don’t know what I would’ve done to get the money to properly have my dog’s medical needs taken care of. Angel Fund took a lot of stress off me and was a huge relief.”
Dr. Brooks, who is owner of the Mar Vista hospital, was concerned about air in Vasily’s chest cavity but after hours of observation concluded that it would subside on its own and didn’t need what would have been expensive treatment, Nicole said.
She was given Vasily – now four years old – by a friend she made while visiting in Russia a couple of years ago.
Nicole had been studying at UC Davis but decided to take some time off in 2016 after two years because of the pressure she felt to maintain her 4.0 grade-point average. “The pressure of maintaining it just got to me. I was very devastated and my Mom suggested I take time off and travel,” she said. She decided to do that – something she could afford because of a settlement she had received after a traffic accident several years ago.
After spending time in the South Pacific and Asia (she is a native of the Philippines), she said, “I found myself in Russia.” A scuba diver, she lived nearly two years in Irkutsk, Siberia, but found a real highlight of her time there when she went to Lake Baikal.
“They have this tradition that they go in the water, usually in January. It’s sort of a cultural or religious thing. Baikal is one of the clearest, largest lakes in the world. I was so stoked to go ice diving!” She regards her time in Russia as “the best time of my life.”
She returned to the United States with Vasily in 2018 and tried living in New York City for a short time but then returned to California. Although she had grown up in the Bay Area, she decided to come to Los Angeles. She now teaches some free-lance Yoga via Zoom and is hoping to sell some of her paintings and pottery online to supplement her finances.
She’s also thinking about going back to college, perhaps online. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school and I would need a refresher course,” she said.
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I you are feeding Grain Free foods, but sure that all of the proteins are MEAT proteins, NOT peas, lentils and potatoes.
From NBC News
Aug. 5, 2021, 2:00 AM PDTBy Linda Carroll
A new clue has been found that might help solve the puzzle of how certain dog foods may lead to a deadly form of canine heart disease, a new study suggests.
Researchers compared dog foods that the Food and Drug Administration has associated with canine dilated cardiomyopathy and traditional dog foods, looking at the quantities of more than 800 compounds. They discovered some that might be related to DCM. Right now, peas are at the top of the list of ingredients associated with the compounds, according to the report published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
Peas are included in many grain-free dog foods — which may increase or add pulses, such as peas or lentils, and potatoes to their formulations to replace the grain — and in some traditional dog foods, according to the FDA.
“I see this as a piece of the puzzle,” said a researcher, Dr. Lisa Freeman, a professor and board-certified veterinary nutritionist at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. “This research helps us narrow down the targets to look at so we can focus on the most likely causes and get to an answer more quickly and prevent other dogs from being affected.”
Canine dilated cardiomyopathy, or DCM, is a severe disease of the heart muscle that can develop in dogs and humans, causing the heart to grow bigger and its contractions weaker. Ultimately, the disease can end in heart failure and death. Some breeds of large dogs are genetically susceptible to DCM, including Great Danes, German shepherds and Doberman pinschers, according to VCA Animal Hospitals.
Freeman and her colleagues used an approach called foodomics to compare the biochemical compounds that differ between traditional dog foods and those that might be linked to DCM.
The researchers compared 830 compounds in nine traditional dog foods to nine that have been associated with DCM. They dubbed the suspect products 3P/FDA, because of the three ingredients — pulses, potatoes and sweet potatoes — that are in the dog foods’ top 20 components.
Of the 122 compounds that were significantly higher in the 3P/FDA foods than in traditional foods, 24 were amino acid-related and 20 were plant compounds. Among the 27 compounds that were lowest in the suspect dog foods compared to traditional foods were seven B vitamins.
A further analysis, using machine learning, narrowed the number of suspect compounds to 30. The ingredient that was most strongly associated with those compounds was peas, which have been a focus of the FDA’s investigation. Because some of the ingredients have been found in dog foods that haven’t been linked to the heart condition, the issue may be how much of them is used, according to the FDA.
However, Freeman isn’t ready to steer dog owners away from all foods containing peas.
“Until we know the exact cause, we want to be cautious of all the ingredients the FDA is investigating,” she said. “Peas might be a good clue as to where we can be looking. As one more piece of the puzzle, this doesn’t give us the final answer, unfortunately. But it gives us things to follow up on.”
The new findings may be a “piece of the puzzle,” but it’s a very complicated puzzle, said Dr. Joseph Wakshlag, a professor of nutrition at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine.
The condition may end up being a combination of susceptibility genes and certain foods, said Wakshlag. “Maybe if you have subpar nutrients and a particular genetic type, you might get the perfect storm,” he said.
Since the FDA began warning dog owners in 2014 that heart failure in their dogs might be associated with some types of food, more than 1,100 cases of diagnosed DCM have been reported to the agency. At least 280 of the dogs died.
Ultimately, the best way to stay out of trouble with dog foods is to stick with the ones that have been around for decades and haven’t been implicated in diseases like DCM, said Wakshlag, who has no ties to dog food companies.
The FDA hasn’t recommended a recall related to the heart disease or declared any specific pet food products unsafe. Dog owners who are concerned about a pet’s food can submit safety reports to the FDA at the Safety Reporting Portal.