Northeastern Ontario dog owners warn about blastomycosis after family pet succumbs to infection
Stella was a happy, healthy nine-year-old lab until two weeks before she died, her owners say
A northeastern Ontario couple who lost their dog to blastomycosis say they're warning people about the danger posed by the illness in hopes of sparing others a similar experience, and similar grief.
Peter Savara and Katie Cacciotti say they took their dog, Stella, to the vet because she was coughing and losing weight and ended up leaving without her – after being advised to put her down.
"She didn't think that Stella would survive like the first two days [of the medication] because she had so much in her lungs," Savara said of the vet.
"So yeah we had to basically make a decision right then and there … So that wasn't a good day for anybody.
"She basically suffocated," Cacciotti added.
Cacciotti and Savara have been posting their story on Facebook to raise awareness about the disease.
More cases in the northeast this year
Blastomycosis is a fungal infection caused by an organism called blastomyces dermatitidis, explained Dr. Carolyn Lariviere, a veterinarian at the Walden Animal Hospital in Sudbury and the Gray Street Veterinary Clinic in Espanola.
It primarily affects dogs, but it can also infect cats and people, she said.
It's been present in the northeast for years, but the number of cases per year can vary.
Some years, Lariviere said, she sees none. Other years, she might see between five and 10.
This year, she's already seen five, she said, and her clinic has been getting more calls about it from worried pet-owners.
There have also been more cases this year on Manitoulin Island, she added.
"The fungal organism likes to live in soil and rotting wood and rotting vegetation, and it tends to be found in areas that are close to water bodies, like rivers and lakes on the shores in those areas," Lariviere said.
"It's disturbed when dogs start to come and dig ... or they start nosing around looking for frogs or muskrats."
Once inhaled, the fungus infects the lungs and turns into a yeast form, she said.
Incubation period highly variable
It will typically cause fever and lethargy and sometimes a cough, and dogs will often stop eating.
Other forms of the disease cause sores on the skin, and more serious forms can spread to the eye, the nervous system or the bones and joints.
The incubation period can be anywhere from four weeks to four months, making it tricky to diagnose, Lariviere said.
"The incubation time is the part that gets everybody sort of confused about what may be happening," she said.
"There may have been, you know, an interaction, and they think the dog has kennel cough because they were just with another dog last week, completely forgetting about two months ago when they were, you know, digging after a muskrat on the side of a riverbank."
Savara and Cacciotti say kennel cough was what they suspected when Stella first fell ill.
And when they realized it was more serious than that, it was already too late, Cacciotti said.
"She was a happy, healthy lab one minute, and then within two weeks, she was not the same dog whatsoever," she said.
"She was choosing to either breathe or eat, and she was choosing breathing."