21 Polo Ponies drop dead

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I can confirm that they do hoard food, though perhaps not quite so industriously. I had a ferret in High School (back when they were still illegal exotic pets) and when we moved out of our townhouse we found her food EVERYWHERE. She used to eat a mix of cat food and “Gainsburgers” dog food. Well we thought she did. It seemed clear that she really only ate the cat food. We found a good ten pounds of fossilized Gainsburgers all over the house. Thnak goodness the things had dried up and turned white - I can’t imagine what the place would have smelled like otherwise. :eek:

Of course, maybe then we would have found out sooner . . .

42

Mmm - Rachel, you’ve come back!

First thing I thought when I saw the story.

43

That’s a lot of glue.

And great story- the giggles started at I Have Almonds And You Don’t, and grew from there.

44

My first thought was blister beetles but I guess they’d have to have had a heck of an infestation of them to kill that many horses that fast.

45

Apparently botulism, as I said upthread.

46

Heck of a blister beetle, Brownie! – couldn’t resist

47

This is bad enough, but what a sight it would be if 21 polo elephants were to drop dead. :eek:

48

Thanks for reposting that story! I had never read it before and now I’m trying to stifle the giggles.

Like corkboard, I was especially ticked by I Have Almonds and You Don’t, but I also loved the image of the squirrel smirking at the hawk through the window, with a treat in each paw.

49

Close. It’s now being called a pharmacy error - they were attempting to replicate a vitamin supplement called Biodyl that’s banned in the US, but is apparently perfectly fine and legal in Venezuela (where the ponies are from) and in much of the world.

If they’d been able to bring the commercially-prepared supplement into the US, the ponies would most likely still be alive and well.

50

CNN.com’s coverage of the tragedy and its accidental cause: Florida pharmacy says it wrongly prepped horse meds before match - CNN.com

51

That pharmacy is toast.

I’ve never heard of a 1) pharmacy for humans that mixes up special batches for animals 2) for a combination of ingredients which together are banned by the FDA.
Any other perspective or thoughts on this.

Thanks for the squirrel story. Well written funny stuff.

52

It can happen. A friend of mine had to get some weird medicine for her cat made at a compounding pharmacy.

53

I had to get digoxin mixed up as a liquid medication to give to one of my ferrets, who had heart problems. Children also take a liquid version of it if they have heart problems, so regular pharmacies are used to this. I walked up with a prescription to the pharmacy at my then-workplace (a hospital), and the pharmacist who took it did a double-take and asked how old the child was who was on this dose. I said it was for a ~2 lb ferret, and he visibly relaxed; apparently the dose looked really wrong for anyone who’d be an outpatient, as it’s weight-related.

As for the mixture in question, if I understand it right, none of those ingredients are banned, but the mixture in question hasn’t been FDA approved - and, I assume, not submitted for testing.

But yes, the pharmacy screwed up bigtime if it was in fact their error. (Versus if the vet wrote up the wrong dosing on the scrip.)

54

When a rat of ours had cancer, we had steroids mixed for him at a local pharmacy. Apparently, the pharmacist there also does medications for the St. Louis zoo.

But yeah, the pharmacists in this story screwed up big time.