State and federal agencies are investigating the mystery virus that has claimed the lives of at least 30 dogs in Michigan.
MDARD said Monday that the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Michigan State University’s veterinary laboratory, the US Department of Agriculture and other collaborators have been working for the past two months to determine the cause of the disease affecting dogs in the state.
The unknown virus causes acute gastrointestinal problems and usually kills young dogs within three to five days. Symptoms include bloody diarrhea, vomiting and lethargy.
Symptoms of the disease are similar to those of parvovirus, which cause similar symptoms and are spread through dog-to-dog contact and contaminated feces. Puppies and older dogs are more vulnerable to the virus, and most of those killed were under the age of 2.
Melissa Fitzgerald, animal control director for Otsego County, where the virus was first reported, told the Detroit Free Press that the dogs that died tested negative for parvo.
“It’s scary,” Fitzgerald said. “There are so many things that it could be.”
Fitzgerald said the infected dogs did not appear to have had contact with each other.
A state veterinarian said some samples tested positive for parvo, however.
“We are still in the early stages of this investigation, but some of the first samples submitted to the Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory were positive for canine parvovirus. However, more results are pending and much remains to be learned,” states Veterinarian Nora Wineland, DVM, said in a statement.
Northern Michigan dog owner Adriana Potrafki told WXMI-TV that four of her dogs woke up in early July with bloody diarrhea and an upset stomach. She didn’t work for two weeks for fear of leaving the dogs alone when her veterinarian admitted she was mystified about what caused the illness.
“It affected me a lot. If something happened I couldn’t leave them,” Potrafki said.
Her dogs, who were all vaccinated against parvo as puppies, later recovered.
(This story has not been edited by seemayo staff and is published from a rss feed)