Bob Hennessey
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Feb 2010
Location: off the res.
Posts: 3416 |
Despite its name, the water in the Mud River was clear on the day in September 2014 when Lisa Newton walked Petey, an 11-year-old beagle, and Zeus, a 10-month-old chocolate Lab, along its shore in the town of Grygla, roughly an hour southwest of Lake of the Woods.
Petey, a rescue dog, drank from the river that day. When they got home, he laid down on his favorite napping spot on the entryway rug. Newton’s teenage daughter, Marisa, arrived home a little while later and screamed. Petey was dead, a pool of saliva on the floor.
“Old age,” Newton thought at the time. She buried Petey.
“He got along good with everybody, and everybody in town knew Petey when he would bark and howl,” she said. “He was a really good dog.”
The next morning, Newton walked Zeus, her daughter’s dog, along the same river trail. He played in the river and drank from it.
“We got back to the house and I put laundry in, and when I came back up, I looked at him and his eyes were swollen shut,” Newton said. She took him outside to rinse his eyes out, but minutes later, Zeus struggled to walk.
“He started stumbling sideways,” she said. Newton phoned her daughter, telling her to call the veterinarian. Newton called a friend to help her get the dog to the vet.
“Within that time, he barely made it into the house, vomited on the floor, fell to the floor and then appeared to have mild seizures,” she said. “I was absolutely terrified.”
Zeus died on the way to the vet.
“It’s really awful to watch an animal or anything go through what he did. He was struggling to survive and to stand and there was nothing I could do for him,” Newton said.
Her daughter was devastated, Newton said. “That was her baby.”
After Zeus’ death, the veterinarian asked Newton to exhume Petey’s body. The dog’s stomach and parts of his liver and lung were sent for testing. Microcystin, a liver toxin produced by blue-green algae, was in Petey’s system, and the vet said that, given the circumstances, toxic algae likely killed Zeus, too.
MPCA research scientist Steve Heiskary has been investigating reports of blue-green algae exposure in dogs for years.
“I can appreciate what the people are dealing with,” he said. Heiskary has two hunting dogs of his own.
It’s often difficult to determine whether a dog has been poisoned by blue-green algae, even after MPCA staff investigate. And some of the few confirmed cases of toxic algae deaths in dogs have happened in waters where there were no visible signs of a blue-green algae bloom. That’s led the MPCA and other agencies to rethink how they inform dog owners about the possible dangers.
The “when-in-doubt-stay-out” advice that the MPCA and other agencies have given dog owners is not foolproof. MPCA officials recommend people and dogs stay out of water that looks like green paint, but Heiskary notes that toxins can linger even after the scum disappears.
“The bloom collapses. They die, they start to decompose. Toxins are released. Is the water safe to swim in a day later? We don’t know. Two days later? We don’t know,” he said. “As a scientist, you like to be more certain. I’d like to be able to accurately convey a risk.”
To complicate things further, blue-green algae is not always toxic, and it’s impossible to know without testing if an algae bloom contains toxins, Heiskary said.
Captain, a 10-month-old Lab-golden mix, died last June after playing in Red Rock Lake, west of Alexandria.
“The water was 100 percent crystal clear,” Captain’s owner, Dawn Stimmler, said. But the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Diagnostic Lab later confirmed high levels of anatoxin-a, a neurotoxin found in some blue-green algae, in Captain’s body.
Stimmler, who has two other dogs, was with Captain and Liberty, a German shepherd, the day Captain got sick. Liberty normally loves to swim, but was acting odd that day, she said.
“She kept whining and whining and refused to go in the water,” Stimmler said.
The Minnesota Department of Health has been looking for algae illnesses and deaths in dogs for the past few years.
“Dog cases are becoming more commonly reported,” said Kirk Smith, a veterinarian who oversees the health department’s unit that addresses waterborne illnesses. “Dogs and other animals can be sentinels for human disease.”
Two people who fell ill last summer after swimming in Lake Henry in Alexandria and West Olaf Lake near Pelican Rapids are suspected toxic algae cases. Smith said there are likely more out there that health officials don’t know about.
“For most every disease, what we find out about is the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
The challenge is determining whether toxic algae is the culprit when there is no diagnostic test for it in humans, said Stephanie Gretsch, an epidemiologist who tracks waterborne diseases at the health department.
“These illnesses are generally pretty mild and they’re also non-specific,” she said. “It could be a harmful algal bloom, or it could be something else in the lake, or it could be something they ate while they were at the lake.”
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05-31-2016 03:58 PM
