Dogs suffer from mystery illness

DURANGO, CO - An outbreak of an unknown respiratory illness has left dozens of dogs sick in the Durango area and veterinarians expect more dogs will become infected.

Riverview Animal Hospital Veterinarian Stacee Santi said the mystery virus is infecting dogs throughout the area. The animal hospital she works at has seen 40 cases in the past few weeks. She said each dog is coughing, wheezing and at times is left gasping for air.

“It’s getting bad quick,” Santi said. “These animals are acting sick, they don’t want to eat, they don’t want to play and they have a very bad deep cough.”

The first case was reported in February. Santi said since then the number of sick dogs in the city has skyrocketed.

“In the whole community there have probably been at least 100 cases” Santi said.

The sick dogs are put on two powerful antibiotics for two weeks. Santi said it appears to helping. However, she said for some the virus has proven to be too strong.

“We’ve had to hospitalize a few of those for intensive treatment,” Santi said. “It’s been life threatening for some.”

Santi said she typically sees around one or two cases of dogs suffering from pneumonia in a year. However, her animal hospital has already seen eight cases in the past few weeks. She said there have been more than 20 cases throughout the city.

“When the lungs become so infected they can’t breathe well and we have to support with oxygen, IV fluids,” Santi said.

Santi said what worries her most is they don’t know what’s causing the outbreak. So for the past few weeks veterinarians in the Durango area have been collecting swabs from the infected dogs’ throats and eyelids and sending the samples to specialists.

It’s something Santi said she has never had to do in her 15 years of practice. Until Durango veterinarians get this outbreak under control they are being extra careful about what doges they send out of town for specialized treatments.