kgilbert65

And thanks to all of you for helping me through this with all of your kind words and support.

Picked up my little buddy's ashes today. I will be getting a nice little urn for him.

Thanks Greywings, I know the vet said his lungs looked clear and pink. I will ask her if she saved some tissue just in case. Thanks Nancy, I am sorry for your loss. This happened so fast that morning that I was literally in shock and it didnt really sink in until the next morning taking him for the necropsy. I am doing better the past day and a half and am remembering the good times and will be picking up his ashes this morning. Everyone on here has been so wonderful.

Thanks Greywings...do you think the upcoming Histopathology tests would uncover such a disease if he had it?

Thanks Katana600

So you think something he ate was possibly contaminated by bugs prior to his ingesting it? On Friday and Saturday he ate veggies and fruits from the fridge that were washed. I gave him apples, broccoli, red, yellow and green bell peppers as well as leafy red and green romaine lettuce. He also was chatting up a storm on Saturday, the day before he died. If it was this horrible disease hopefully something will show in the lab tests. Thanks for your kind words Greywings.

Thanks Katana600 and I am sorry for your loss of Juno. I am doing much better the past 2 days with my grief. I am sad but the grief is lifting and I am focusing more on the good times with him. I am so glad I joined your forum and am sorry I wasnt a member during Rio's 8 years on earth. The people who have reached out to me such as yourself and several others have made a world of difference in my going through the process. I trust all of your words and know I did nothing to cause his death. I came on here to pour my heart out to fellow CAG keepers and did not hold anything back, for better or for worse about my feeding and care of Rio. As mentioned many times I will always kick myself for not taking him for a yearly well bird exam and bloodwor like I do my 3 dogs. I will never know if something could have been detected and medication applied to remedy something like high cholesterol. I am in pretty good shape at 49 and have been taking a statin since 2000 which has controlled my high cholesterol. Animals in our care have no say over what we feed them and what sort of medical care they receive. It is our responsibility to feed them properly and provide medical care both preventive and reactive and if we cannot do that for them then we have no right to have them in our homes. Rio's birthday is next month. It would have been his 8th. I wil post some pics of various times on his life including his just out of the egg days. He looked like a little dinosaur lol I have a 14 month old pug puppy who I have been videoing since I brought him home in April of 2013 and every vudeo made inside has the Rio Peanut Gallery in the background or a cameo of Rio himself in it. I never knew how happy I would be to have that one day. He had at least a 100 word vocab plus dozens of sounds. As we all know greys will often blurt out a montage of sounds and words each morning to say hi to their flock however Rio would only use a few words in exact context while bever just blurting them out. I know for sure he knew their meaning. Here are a few: I was very sad when I lost my dad, lost a job and was very down a few days due to each event. Rio found the right moment as I was either walking by his cage or holding him to say...."It's Ok Buddy" I believe he only said that a handful of times and each time ot was at the right and appropriate moment. He also used to say I love you at certain times and not just randomly. When I would leave the house I would say "Goodbye Be Good" and everytime he would see me getting ready to leave and head out the door he would say "Goodbye Be Good" He called the dogs by name and would tell them to settle down or get in their crates without my needing too when they acted up. CAG's are not just little tape recorders. They are intelligent creatures who can communicate with us and I only wish they had a way to tell us if they dont feel good and need medical attention.

Thanks again to all for such a warm welcome to your forum and such kind and loving words of support. I had my little buddy cremated yesterday and will be picking up his asjes tomorrow. I will be searching for just the right urn to honor him. I know it is just his body, the vehicle that housed his spirit while here on earth, a spirit that is now free to fly and play with other birds and animals and watch over me. What do all of you feed you CAG's as far as pellets go? As mentioned I was feeding Rio roudy bush at the appropriate size for a CAG. I also gave him a host of safe people foods and veggies and fruits and very little seed. I wish I had stuck with the Harrisons but he refused to eat it and even stopped talking or whistling for 2 weeks after I tried to force him to eat them. I have looked at the ingredients of Roudy Bush and Zupreem and they are corn based as the firsts set of ingrediants. I guess when the time comes that I do get a new freshly weaned baby I can start him on Harrisions in the first place. My dogs all eat a mix of Natural Balance salmon and Blue Buffalo Salmon so I am all about the best holistic non grain foods for my dogs and always thought the roudy bush was almost an equivelant type of bird food, just under the quality of harrisons. I gave Rio apples, baby carrots, red and green leafy romaine lettuce, strawberries, mangos, green, yellow and red bell peppers, red and green grapes, cooked pieces of salmon and chicken (maybe once a month) plus some of my cooked pasta. I pretty much gave him everything other than avacados, onions, chocolate or of course any type of alcohol. I ran out of pellets during the final 4 to 5 days of his life so I was giving him a host of other items as the store in my area was out of the small and medium sized roudy bush pellets.

Forgot to add ive read the label of roudy bush just shocked to hear its not the best food i couldnt tell you what harrisons is made of either. Rio hated it and i bought into roudy bush being one of the next best pelleted foods.

Thanks everyone. Your words have helped very much. I took him to a pet cremetory today and will get a special little urn for him. He passed at 12:57pm and was at the vets at 9 an the next day so i hope there was a window for some sort of blood to be collected. I will ask the vet on monday. They said he was a little underweight and i never even noticed. i am not sure how quick a parrot can lose weight especially if he was battling heart disease. You are so right that its natural to want to take the blame and have the proof its something we did. I have kept thinking maybe I got too complacent cuz he has been so healthy and the notion that CAGs live so long theres a sense of he is gonna out live me. All my vet said was he was a little underweight not alot and he was not malnourished by any means and his pancreas was a little inflamed but it could have been post mordem and his lungs were clear and pink and his heart had some fluid around it. I am hoping the histo sheds some light on something genetic or something recent I still cant grasp how such a young bird could just go so suddenly He was active and talking sat then sun a bit quiet in the am and then BAM I know it wont bring him back but knowing details surrounding a heart attack or stroke will help me to move forward. Im stunned how many reports ive found and read on the internet from people whose birds have died the same way and young ones like Rio as well. I am big on feeding quality pet food and my 3 dogs get blue buffalo grain free salmon and Im horrified to read that roudy bush is mostly corn. Outside of Harrisons there doesnt seem to be any other quality pellets. Hearing he was a bit underweight plus roudy bush makes me feel like i didnt give him the nutrition he needed even though he ate fruits nuts veggies and safe people food as well.

I have a question that i actually forgot to ask my vet. When they did the necropsy did they collect blood samples from the heart or other sources to be tested during the upcoming histopathology tests? The vet tech had told me there was no blood to draw because he was kept cold in the fridge overnight before I brought him in but not frozen. I would imagine the tissue and other samples the vet collected during the necropsy included some blood to be tested for say cholesterol etc or other issues that could have effected him. Am I correct? I know from watching Dexter that blood is very vital and just being dead 24 hrs or less and kept in the fridge shouldnt have removed traces of his blood. I can ask the vet Monday.

Katana600 thank you for your gentle and kind words about my Rio. My buddys bird is not in a bad situation. he is well cared for and will not be rehomed unless they were to find someone like me that they felt comfortable with. This was my first bird, my first African Grey and I guess I will wait for a prompt on what is the right thing to do and the right time to do it. I will ask Rio for a sign when the time is right.

Thanks for your input regarding my friends bird SterlingSL. I guess I feel that the 5 year old male has a dialect based on his experiences with my friend and his wife that will remain and make him feel like theirs. he is definately happy where he is as my buddy plays with him and the wife just doesnt handle him. He has a great home and will be safe and happy in the livingroom where their other bird, a blue and gold mccaw lives too. In time maybe I will change my mind. I need to just be without for awhile.

Thanks so much. A friend has offered me a 5 year old male that likes him but hates his wife. They offered him to me as a companion for Rio back in Jan but I declined. I didnt want to upset my boy. Plus one was plenty and I didnt want to risk upsetting him or changing our relationship. The offer still stands but as nice of an offer that it is, a free grey, I want a baby of my own to raise up and bond with and as I like to call it, program for my life. Plus if it is not absolutely nessesary, why pull a grey out of their home as it may really become depressed etc. I believe Rio and I had such a great relationship because I raised him and he has only had me since he left his breeders. I was able to come see him twice a week and the breeder taught me how to properly hand feed him when I would come to visit him. Friends say take the free bird but after raising one and losing one, I just dont feel right about a rehomed grey. Especially if he is not in danger of going to a bad home or his owners need to rehome etc. Back in Jan they knew he would have a great home as they know how I was with Rio and perhaps his wife was the one behind the suggestion.

Thanks JeffNOK. Yes please do get a full workup done. Perhaps if my boy had high cholesterol he could have taken a statin drug like we humans do? I will talk to my vet about this more when I meet with her to go over the histo results in a couple weeks. I hope he knew I was holding him and heard me talking to him. He was so listless but he was alive so I would like to think he knew and heard me. That's a large source of comfort in that he did not die alone in his cage. I was home and sitting 4 feet away when he fell and I didnt even hear him fall. He just slipped off and was caught by the small space between the sleeping perch and the cage bars so he was just sort of hanging there.