Wayward Writer

One of the unseen hazards of heatwaves is pet food spoiling and then making animals sick. This has happened to multiple people in my sphere recently (and my own poor cats), but vomiting and diarrhea in cats and dogs, when vet exams come up with no other cause, are just labeled as GI issues. I had prescription canned food on autoship and it came due during a heatwave. I called Royal Canin to ask if they took any precautions for shipping, like ice packs, since delivery trucks don't have refrigeration. They assured me the food would be fine. It wasn't. When I reported the subsequent illness to the company, the rep made the comment they'd never heard of food spoiling like that. I believe that's because it's an overlooked source of random illness in our pets. There's Reddit threads of people saying that because the food is shipped in hot trucks, it's fine. No, just because something has always been done a certain way does not mean it's fine. (Not to mention extreme heat is becoming more frequent and intense.) So for the love of your fur babies, try not to have food shipped to you during excessive heat. And if any of you go through a bout of random pet diarrhea or vomiting, think about the food and whether it's been sitting in an un-air-conditioned environment. My hope is that pet owners will take more notice and report these problems to the food companies that will force them to take better precautions with ensuring the quality of the food we feed our pets. Let me put it this way: would you eat a package of food with meat ingredients if it'd been sitting in a delivery truck for hours or days with the internal temperature reaching over 100 degrees? Then why would you feed the same to your pet?