I write this with tears streaming down my face. My husband and I are sick beyond words. Our precious, loyal, sweet companion passed away this week due to being poisoned by this awful medicine. My last visions of her was suffering for 18 hours start. This is our story….. It was last Saturday morning and time for the heart worm medicine and a flea treatment. My husband held our 13 lbs Shih Zu while I applied the Hartz Ultra Guard Plus for 4-15 lbs dogs, I then gave her heart worm prevention medicine. Later that evening I noticed she wasn’t acting like herself and would shiver every few seconds. She didn’t get any better or worse over the weekend. This shiver thing was weird and she walked with her head and tail down. She just didn’t feel good. We took her in to the vet on Tuesday because she just wasn’t getting any better. We did inform the vet that after we applied the flea medicine and gave her the heart worm medicine is when she started acting sick. I thought maybe the combination of medicines was the problem, but he reassured me that the combination had nothing to do with it, but he was concerned about the type of flea medicine we used. Upon evaluating Lily he did discover she had a bladder infection so it was thought that the bladder infection was making her as sick. We took her home with antibotics. Wednesday morning at 5:30 is when the horror began. We woke up to her laying at the end of our bed, on the floor, seizing, foaming at the mouth, drenched in drool. We called the vet and he met us at his office immediate. He put her on IV to try and stop the seizing. He informed us she had got into some poison. Well, I know what the poison was now. I’m the one that put that awful poison on my baby girl. This was Wednesday morning, three full days after we put it on her. Lily laid there for 18 hours, seizing and foaming at the mouth, the most heart wrenching sight you will ever see. My vet said there was a chance she would come out of it and we needed to wait it out. He called us at 9:50 p.m. and told us the horrible news that she had passed. We are stricken with grief. This did not need to happen. If only I had done my research. This stuff needs to be taken off the market! I called Hartz and told them the situation. They gave me a case number and address where to send my complaint, then sent me to their medical team. They told me they would pay for an autopsy and we considered it but after reading some posts on here it sounded like they would just deny it or they would say it was the bladder infection that killed her. We really wanted to bring our Lily home to bury her on our farm. Hartz said after the autopsy was complete they would do a “communal cremation” … basically a bunch of animals would be burned together. If I thought it was do some good and help this from happening to someone else, we would send her in, but I don’t think it would. We went and pick our little girl up, my husband has her in a nice box with her bed and toys and we plan on burying her tonight. We are heartbroken in Michigan. Please tell everyone you know not to use this stuff. I will be filing a complaint with the EPA and the Attorney General. I wish there was more I could do. I will always miss by baby girl and think this should not have happened! Jill Gross, Michigan [email protected]
9 Comments Received
May 9th, 2011 @3:26 pm
Dear Jill,
Our most sincere and deep condolences to you and your husband over the loss of your precious Lily. The love you have for her is so apparent from your story. We will keep all of the Hartz victims in our prayers until there are no more.
May 10th, 2011 @2:57 am
I came across your story due to the fact that I used Vectra 3D for the first time on Friday, a short time later both of my schnauzers were so so sick, one very lethargic the other total opposite he was running from room to room, needless to say they are still dealing with the effects of it. I to only learned about how devastating these applications can be after the fact of using it. I am blown away by all of the information and stories I have found on here. But I just want to tell you how sorry i am for your loss, I cried as I read your story. Again I am very sorry for your loss and pain you are going through.
May 10th, 2011 @12:55 pm
My deepest condolences to you and your husband. I lost my cat to Sergeants two weeks ago. I know how you feel.I have filed a complaint as well, and they sent me a sympathy card .. (pretyped) with a business card in it. I havent filled out the forms yet because I am like you feel like they are going to blame something else other then products. Please fight for your pet. I intend to do so myself. These products need to be pulled off the shelves. Feel free to email me anytime.. [email protected]. I think we need to get a petition together and get this taken off the shelves before more pets die.
May 11th, 2011 @8:56 am
I have a three year old tabby cat. His names Newton,A very loyal shy cat that will lay on your lap and purr all night long never leaving my side. I love this cat more than any could ever imagine and so when he got outside to play,(I suppose thats what he wanted to do) I ran to the petsMart to get him flea drops. I picked up Hertz UltraGuard Pro for my cat. I applied the once a month dosage to the back of his neck in-between his shoulder blades and gave him his little friskies treat. This morning I wake to him next to me seizing I scream and look around to see if he got into anything (very unlike him) He did not I have child locks on the cabinets. He did not get into anything meant for the household. I sit there holding him crying trying to think what to do. Then it hit me the flea drops! I read the pack over and over. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I jump onto my laptop and Googled UltraGaurd poisoning I come to the story of the women flea dropping her cat then bathing her and the cat got better. So i bathed my cat(was not a fun job) and he seemed better. I was relieved. But then the tick like seizing came back i rushed him to Archer Vetenary clinic in lemont, illinois. They have seen this happen before, currently little Newton is in overnight care for a nerontoxin (Hertz UltraGaurd Pro)
I am Very shocked that there is no warnings what so ever on the packaging of this product. “DO NOT USE HERTZ ULTRAGAURD PRO! IT MAY HARM YOUR BELOVED PETS!” should be the warning label. It is a misleading product it is not the fun loving product you see in commercials. It rob you of a life long furry friend.
May 11th, 2011 @7:30 pm
Thank you all for your kind words. We need to keep spreading the word on the awful poison. Our poor defenseless pets deserve better! This company needs to stop selling this stuff. I hope it doesn’t take a small child being poisoned to make them wake up and stop!
May 12th, 2011 @8:52 am
Our sweet Henry (girl tabby cat) got her first dose of the flea medicine last night and my husband and I are fighting for her life as I type. she is seizing, drooling, ticking, i am so scared. he is at the vet so i jumped online to find out what i can and found this article. we have to get this out there so people will know. i am so worried.
May 12th, 2011 @5:30 pm
Jill, I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this has happened to Lily, you and your husband. Believe me, I understand the sense of loss and grief, as the identical tragedy happened to our perfectly healthy Scottish Terrier four years ago. I know that you will be able to carry on over time, but the pain and the guilt will remain forever. It’s even worse knowing that thousands of other families go through exactly the same pain an devastation you are going through, year after year after year. Please know that you and your husband, in fact, are not guilty. It is Hartz and the other manufacturers of these over-the-counter topical pesticide spot-on’s that have created this reprehensible tragedy and it has been going on for decades. Unfortunately, the federal agency established to protect consumers and American citizens, the Environmental Protection Agency, has been completely complicit–actually an enabler–of the devastation to animals and pet owners. The EPA is one of the most lax bureaucracies in our federal government and in spite of years of studies and factual documentation and science objectively concluding the appalling impact of these products they rarely take significant action to protect consumers and pets, and when they do it’s insignificant and disgustingly late.
You wrote that you and your husband intend to take action and you have called Hartz and will be calling your state Attorney General and the EPA. Those are excellent steps. Believe me, Hartz was not happy to hear from you and will NOT want you calling the EPA or your Attorney General. Their offer of a necropsy is a hollow gesture and I’m glad you did not accept it. They routinely make this offer and send the animal remains to people–those that they call “veterinary experts”–who have accepted retainers from Hartz for years to do this kind of work, or have accepted grants or donations from these product manufacturers. Secondly, the neurotoxin in the pesticide product breaks down quickly in the animal tissue after death and is very difficult to trace after 48 hours. This provides a lot of cover for the manufacturer and the people they retain to do the necropsy. You should be sure to insist that Hartz reimburse you for your veterinary expenses–do not take no for an answer and let your Attorney General know the outcome of that demand. Additionally, please, take one other important step to help yourself and other pets and pet owners. Please take the time to report your incident to the National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC). This organization works with the EPA to compile the database of incidents and statistics that will be analyzed and used as a basis for corrective action. The NPIC can be reached at 1-800-858-7378. They are very professional, courteous and efficient. This is a critical step in the public forcing the EPA–one of the most lax oversight agencies in the federal government–to do the right thing and get these neurotoxin pesticide ingredients out of the marketplace. I have spoken with people at the EPA who, “off the record”, completely agree that these products are extremely dangerous and should not be in the marketplace but feel they cannot do anything about it. I’m going to email you the name of a highly placed person within the EPA that you may want to speak with. This person is not only empathetic but has significant influence and he despises what these products and product manufacturers are doing. He’s one of the few people I trust at the EPA in upper levels and he may one day have enough clout to get something positive done.
Hartz Mountain has one of the most deplorable safety records in the industry with these pesticide products. Their disgraceful safety record goes back to the late 1980′s with their product “Blockade” which caused immense damage to animals and also injured humans, prior to Hartz having to remove it from the marketplace. Since then they have been fined, forced to make labeling changes and had their cat and kitten product cancelled by the EPA in 2005. In spite of this late and lax action by the EPA, Hartz and other manufacturers continue to develop, distribute, market and sell pesticide neurotoxins that injure and kill pets by the tens of thousands each year. It’s reprehensible that Hartz, BioSpot, Sergeant’s, Summitt VetPharm (Vectra and Vectra D) and others continue to injure and kill thousands of pets–-it’s absolutely unacceptable. We should all do whatever we can to prevent this from happening to other animals and families. Communications to the proper regulatory agencies, manufacturers, NPIC, the media and politicians are critical steps. The media actually frightens the manufacturers more than any entity I’ve mentioned. Your Attorney General is another person Hartz does not want to hear from. All the best. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss. I understand the pain and sense of guilt. I hope you’ll translate that grief into action and do everything you can to ensure these products are taken off the market. Many others are doing just that and if enough of us take action you will make Lily proud.
May 15th, 2011 @6:35 am
I had purchased some biospot from tractor supply for my male
cat and put on him 5/13/11.On 5/14/11 he started not eating
and shaking real bad unable to walk.He is about two years old.
I tried to call a local vet late Saturday night unable to reach one.I pulled up this site and read artickal about using
dish detergent to bath aninmal off I did use it and by this
morning he was doing fine and eating again.I would like to
think you for placing this information on internet I believe
my cat would have died if I had not washed this chemical off
of him.
Thankyou so much
Donald Guthrie and blacky
May 18th, 2011 @9:39 am
I am so sorry for your loss and i am glad i read about all the awful things that have happened to everyones beloved pets. I will not buy it now and will tell everyone to research very well as there has been very bad things even death from using this product. Again i am so very sorry for your loss!!!!!!!!!
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