Injury or Death of a Pet Due to Possible Pesticide Application
If your pet was injured or died due to a possible pesticide application, these are some guidelines that you will need to follow.
Injury:
Take your pet to your veterinarian immediately.
Contact the pest control provider and have them deliver or fax labels and material safety data sheets of all pesticides used on the premises to the veterinarian. These documents have valuable information for your vet to properly treat your animal.
- Write down the dates, time and narratives in chronological order of what took place while things are still fresh in your mind.
- Take photographs of area and keep samples of anything you feel relevant that would be used as evidence in the case.
- Do not let pest control provider touch or remove anything until you have obtained all the evidence needed for the case.
- If your pet survives, have the vet run diagnostic test(s) on your pet, i.e. blood, urine stomach contents, etc. to diagnose the cause of your pets injury.
- If the cause of the injury was pesticides, have your vet write a written statement to the cause of the pet’s injury and have the vet keep the samples of the tests. Make sure that your vet writes down the exact cause of the problem. Writing down, possible or probable cause of injury due to pesticides will raise questionable cause if you decide to pursue the matter further.
From this point its up to you on how to proceed to get possible compensation on your pet’s injury.
The best case scenario would be, the vet has a written statement that the injury was caused by pesticides. These written documents bode well for getting proper compensation for your pets injury.
On the other side of the coin, if the vet cannot diagnose exactly what caused your pets injury and no problems were found with the pesticide application, your attempt for compensation may be futile.
Pet Death
Do not dispose of the pet.
Only do this if your sure that your pet is deceased, if you feel that your pet is alive or can be saved, take it to your veterinarian immediately.
Write down the dates, time and narratives in chronological order of what took place while things are still fresh in your mind.
Take photographs of area and keep samples of anything you feel is relevant that would be used as evidence in the case.
Do not let pest control provider touch or remove anything until you have obtained all the evidence needed for the case.
Take the deceased pet to the veterinarian for a complete autopsy.
If you cannot get the pet to the veterinarian in a reasonable amount of time, place the pet in a plastic bag and store in ice for larger animals or if the pet was small enough in your freezer. I know this sounds morbid, but it is very important that an autopsy be performed to determine the cause of death.
If the autopsy reveals the cause of death to be pesticide related, have the vet put this in writing. Make sure that the vet writes down the exact cause of death, using words such as “possible” and “probable cause of death” will be questionable actions if you decide to pursue the matter further.
Again at this point its up to you on how you get possible compensation for your pets death.