Have you ever been shopping and something happened that made you want to come home and shower? That happened to me yesterday. I'm still searching for a dog food that reduces my cocker spaniel's constant itching. Like I said in previous posts, I'm convinced that she's allergic to chicken on top of a slew of other ingredients. However, because of her history with pancreatitis, I can't just buy any old, non-chicken based food. I have to buy low fat food as well.I went to Petsmart around lunch yesterday to get a small bag of Lamb & Rice dog food. After about 10 minutes, I had my choices narrowed down to three--Blue Buffalo Lamb & Rice, Science Diet Naturals Lamb & Rice, and Authority Harvest Baked Lamb & Rice. The last choice had slightly less fat than the other two and was $3 less so stupidly enough I grabbed it instead of my normal standby Blue Buffalo. (I usually buy the Chicken Weight Control version, however.)
Now I noticed when I picked up the bag that there was something on the outside of the bag that looked like a spiderweb with some trash on it. I just assumed that it was what it looked like--a web--and brushed it off. I wasn't that concerned because I couldn't find a single hole in the bag. I also noticed that the bag smelled, but the ingredients listed salmon meal, in addition to lamb and lamb meal. From experience, I know that salmon based dog foods can often smell through the bag so once again I wasn't that concerned. I just wanted to get home before the Valentine shopping crowd got any worse.
When I got home, the dogs were jumping up and down because they saw that I had a new bag of food in hand so I went ahead and opened it. I then looked into the bag to see how big the kibble was, as Bailey, my Chihuahua, tends to have problems chewing the bigger pieces. Well, let's just say that he wouldn't have a problem chewing this kibble because I wasn't going to let him anywhere near it. The entire bag was swarming with huge gray bugs.
I let out this little yelp and closed the bag quickly. Whatever those things were, I did not want them in my house. Needless to say, I went straight back to Petsmart and asked to exchange the infested bag for the more expensive Blue Buffalo. The cashier apologized--"sometimes you just get a bag like that"--and allowed me to exchange it, but her assurances that it was just a one-time thing didn't stop me from checking the new bag in my car. Luckily, it was bug-free and didn't smell funky.
When I got home, I looked up "big gray bug in dog food" on the Internet. I think, based on what I read, that the bug was an Indian Meal Moth like the ones pictured above or some other kind of "pantry moth" and that the "spiderwebs" on the outside of that bag and the other Harvest Baked bags around it were the silk threads that the moths leave behind or the remnants of a cocoon. The bugs were definitely full grown. Since my bag didn't have any holes, I think the ones in my bag had to come from the manufacturer. Now here's the gross part. Those moths lay between 60 and 300 eggs at a time, and the life cycle of the adult--what was in my food--can be up to 300 days, so basically there could have been up to 300 moths in that bag for nearly a year!
No matter how many times I washed my hands and arms yesterday, I still felt dirty, and I kept checking and double checking the Blue Buffalo food for bugs, larvae, and eggs. I still haven't found any, but I'm still innately paranoid that I'm going to go open the bag one morning and have a drove of moths fly out a me. (Yes, I've seen too many SciFi creature features, but that's what I'm picturing nonetheless.) I've learned one thing from this experience. When it comes to dog food, I won't ever try to save $3 again, and I will never, ever buy anything from Authority or Harvest Baked.
