Distemper at the Dog Pound

The dog pound on Newark Road is dealing with a breakout of distemper. It’s a highly contagious disease that can cause hysteria, paralysis and seizures in un-vacianted dogs.

County dog warden, Bryan Catlin, and representatives from the animal shelter met with the county commissioners Thursday to discuss the issue. The two options the county is faced with is finding a location for all the dogs to stay in quarantine for 30 to 60 days or to euthanize each dog at the pound. Jody Murray said completely disinfecting the pound is the only way to eliminate the virus.

“It is a virus that can be killed and within a couple of days they can be opened back up, the problem again, the difficulty is you can’t really get rid of the virus as long as you have dogs there that are potentially infected that you really don’t know if they’re infected or not,” Murray said.

Dogs can transport this virus by simply being exposed to an infected animal. Over the past several weeks the pound has had three dogs test positive for distemper.

“There’s no easy answer for this,” Murray said. “That’s the really sad thing about this. There’s no easy answer to this and it’s just an unfortunate thing. And it doesn’t mean that anything at the dog pound has been done incorrectly.”

Right now, Commissioner Jim Porter says they are waiting for a price estimate from the fairgrounds to house the dogs in a barn there for the next 30 to 60 days. This will allow them to not euthanize the pound’s entire population.