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Copyright © 2016 Albuquerque Journal

Dozens of seemingly healthy dogs in Albuquerque have suddenly gotten sick with the same symptoms, many of them dying, and veterinarians don’t know the cause.

The cases occurred in recent months and most have been on the West Side.

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It’s extremely sad and frustrating, said Amy Neel, whose 8-year-old service dog Joe, a border collie mix, died Aug. 6.

She soon discovered several neighbors had similar stories, and then more than 100 dog owners ended up responding to a query posted online.

Neel, who has mobility issues, said, “Joe got sick on a Thursday. He was lethargic, had diarrhea, was vomiting and wouldn’t eat or drink. We took him to the vet on Friday.” The veterinarian thought it was something that had to run its course, but by that evening Joe’s condition got worse, and he was having trouble breathing.

That night Neel took Joe to a local animal hospital, where blood tests revealed Joe’s liver enzymes were elevated to the point that they couldn’t be measured accurately. “It was so bad, we had to put him down,” Neel said.

A couple of weeks later, Neel and her husband were chatting with their Paradise Hills next door neighbor, Kasia Zaryczny, and the neighbor on the street behind them, Chris Sturtz. They learned that Zaryczny’s dog Luka had died, while Sturtz reported that neighbors on both sides of her home had dogs that also had to be put down.

Sturtz’s dog is currently sick, but is on medication and appears to be rallying, she said.

Her dog, Roxxi, a Shar-Pei mix, and others fit a particular scenario: seemingly healthy dogs that suddenly become lethargic and experience diarrhea, vomiting and loss of appetite. Tested at their respective veterinary clinics, their liver enzymes were off the charts, the pet owners said. Many of these animals could not be saved.

The neighbors posted about this strange occurrence to Nextdoor.com, a website where neighbors and neighborhood associations can exchange messages. The site exploded with area residents repeating similar horror stories about their pets.

Another neighbor, Christina Rhoderick, whose pets did not become ill, put together and posted a form to collect data from animal owners to try to find any commonalities that might explain what was making the dogs sick. Apparently, the illness did not extend to cats, she said.

Based on more than 100 responses about dogs with similar symptoms, she found that within the last year, 50 dogs had died, 24 of them since May, and 10 just this month – all with the same sudden onset of symptoms. Since May, another 46 dogs became ill with these symptoms, but veterinarians were able to save them, she said.

Rhoderick then created a map to show where the sick and dead animals had lived. “The zip codes most affected are 87114 and 87120, both on the West Side, north of I-40,” and thinning into Rio Rancho, she said.

“Initially, people’s first reaction was somebody must be poisoning their dogs, but now that we have a map that doesn’t seem likely,” Rhoderick said. “It’s too widespread and the person would have to be on the move. Now, we’re thinking it could be something in the environment, like pesticides, herbicides, or maybe droppings from pigeons or some kind of rodent.”

Sturtz offered that the West Side has an abundance of skunks, which are known to carry a number of diseases.

Albuquerque veterinarian and Journal columnist Dr. Jeff Nichol said that 75 percent of American households have a pet, and 60 percent of them have a dog. Consequently, having 50 dogs die in a particular area, as chronicled by Rhoderick’s map, is unremarkable. As dogs age, they commonly die from cancer, kidney failure or heart failure.

“But the symptoms described here, that sure gets my attention and would certainly get the attention of pathology labs, too,” Nichol said.

And that’s part of the problem. It wasn’t until the Nextdoor.com postings and Rhoderick’s questionnaire and map that animal owners understood a pattern was emerging.

“Everyone initially thought it was just their animal, an isolated incident, and didn’t have a necropsy done,” said Sturtz.

To accurately determine what is killing these dogs, a necropsy must be performed and tissue samples taken and analyzed in a pathology laboratory, said Dr. George Abernathy, of the Sunrise Veterinary Clinic, which treated three dogs from the same West Side neighborhood, two of whom died.

“Based on commonalities reported, we can eliminate anti-freeze, because that affects the kidneys, not the liver. Some herbicides can easily cause liver numbers to go up. With rat poisons we should be seeing bleeding, but we’re not, and strychnine would cause seizures, and that’s not being reported either, according to what I know,” he said.

“Maybe it’s a toxin or some nasty infection. Wild animal droppings or things killed by wild animals, which then come in contact with dogs, could possibly affect liver enzymes.”

The bottom line is “we just don’t know,” said Abernathy. “My advice is the next dog that dies, let’s get it to a lab, then we’ll know what direction to go.”

Meanwhile, the city’s Environmental Health Department is closely monitoring the situation. “I’m not convinced at this point that an unbiased data collection method was used,” said Deputy Director Mark DiMenna. He said area residents should not be concerned at this point due to the absence of “better data that’s more verifiable,” including pathology reports on tissue samples that would point to an “emergent pattern.”