[Angie's Bella]

As some of you may remember, I posted a couple of months ago about a rescue puppy I was fostering that had distemper and had to be put to sleep. It was very sad and I felt so bad for the poor little puppy. Well, it turns out that it has effected several puppies at our local animal control. They just did a story about it on our local news. There have been a lot of puppies that have had to be put to sleep and there are many people who have huge vet bills from medical care their newly adopted puppy has had to receive. One family has only had their puppy 2 weeks and already has a vet bill for more than $1300. How very sad for these poor little puppies and these dear people who have decided to rescue a pound puppy instead of purchasing a"name brand" puppy.

 

[silverphoenix69]

If its the same place that I'm thinking...Because of that issue at the shelter/animal control, it also killed 6 ferrets. Someone that runs a ferret shelter took a ferret that was there in and he had distemper, she lost her ferrets as well as the one that came with the Distemper, only 3 of them didn't get distemper

She world around the clock on those ferrets, but sadly Distemper is almost always 100% fatal in ferrets

I'm sorry you also lost a friend because of it Even if you didn't have him long

 

[MrsJohnnyG]

That is SO sad!! Those poor puppies AND the families who just wanted to love them!

 

[Angie's Bella]

What is so sad is that there have been so few cases here that the vets didn't want to diagnose it as distemper. Even the puppy that I had to have put to sleep was wrongly diagnosed to begin with. However there are a couple of dogs that have lived through it long enough to develop the tell tell twitch.

On the news they were trying to say that it was because the animal shelter wasn't clean enough, but there is no truth in that. That is actually one of the cleanest animal facilities that I have ever been in. In defense animal control said that it is due to that fact that people keep dropping off whole litters of puppies that have never had any of their shots and all it takes is one sick puppy to infect a lot of other dogs in such a confined space. There seems to be an abundance of puppies coming in down there right now, it is really no surprise that there are problems with sick puppies. Why do people just keep letting their dogs go around breeding and having puppies???

 

[JohnnyBlaze]

Most byb are ignorant to the fact their dogs are sick to begin with. Its not a leap of faith that they just went ahead and bred their dogs believing that the litter will be fine.

 

[Angie's Bella]

It is just so frustrating when you are trying to save the life of a dog through rescue and it seems like there are 3 or 4 dogs brought in to every one that I am able to save. And then you start getting issues with stuff like distemper and now I am scared to try to bring anything home from there until some of this is cleared up.

 

[Thracian]

I remember this story. How sad that it was practically an epidemic! And it is added sadness that people were just trying to rescue a dog.

 

[cshellenberger]

Last year a shelter in NV (Pahrump I believe) had to put down nearly every dog they had due to distemper and overcrowding. It was absolutely devastating to the rescue community when this happened, there was nothing we could do. Unfortunately as long as people are irresposible and don't get their pups vaccinated on time, this will continue to be the case in shelters. It only takes one or two sick dogs to make every animal in the shelter sick. Too bad that there isn't as much education on low cost vaccinations as here is on low cost S/N.

 

[Pai]

No quarantine areas were available/designated for incoming dogs? =(

It's sad to hear stories like this and the one about Oprah's sick rescue pups. I can't imagine many things worse than getting a new dog and then losing it so soon...

 

[Lolas_Dad]

Perhaps the shelter should be giving the distemper shot as soon as the dogs are dropped off. They should have an isolation area also and quarantine the animals coming in until all the shots are done. They also should not be going on peoples words if they say when they are dropped off that they had their shots.

A few months back it was reported on the news that an ASPCA facility closed down and they left all the dogs behind. These are the people that are supposed to be helping animals and they did not help these guys by leaving them behind.

 

[Angie's Bella]

They do have a quarentine area but it really isn't seperate from the other dogs, just a holding area where they place dogs that are in on other charges, such as biting.They also hold animals there that are sick from time to time, but there are so many dogs coming in down there, EVERYDAY, that they are just doing what they can to keep everything clean. I do think they should adopt a policy where every dog that comes in receives all their shots. I think that the reason they don't is due to the fact that so many dogs and cats are put to sleep there every week, really in a lot of cases it would just be a waste.

It angers me to no end when I see people bringing in whole litters of puppies and kittens. Just last week a woman brought in 2 litters of lab mix puppies, 5 4 month old puppies and 6 eight week old puppies. All of them black and most of them male, which are the hardest dogs to place.

I don't know how many animals are in animal control facilities across the country, but in the south we have an abundance of BYBs and the dogs just keep coming. At any given time you can pick us an advertisement paper and there are tons of dogs for sale and tons of "yorkie-poos" and all kinds of BYB specials, so people just keep buying more and more puppies and more and more dogs die at animal control every week. Less than 40% of the dogs that come in here are adopted and most of the ones that are adopted are puppies. But now that the news has advertised that these puppies are sick and people are out of hundreds of dollars who adopted these puppies I am sure that this little 40% that was going to be adopted just dropped dramitically!! Now what???