St. Landry animal shelter closed by distemper outbreak

The St. Landry Parish Animal Shelter will remain closed indefinitely until state health officials determine whether a recent outbreak of distemper at the facility has been averted, according to parish president Bill Fontenot.

Fontenot said about 10 dogs displaying obvious symptoms of distemper have been euthanized at the shelter over the past several weeks when officials there were alerted to the possibility that the disease may have affected some of the canine population.

The petMD website explains that distemper, which can also occur in wildlife such as raccoons, foxes, wolves and skunks in addition to domestic ferrets, is a contagious viral illness with no known cause. Distemper is normally fatal, spread airborne and can be contracted by both direct and indirect contact, the website says.

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Fontenot said distemper cannot be spread to humans.

Shelter officials, Fontenot said, have put the shelter under temporary quarantine. That means, he said, that the shelter is presently not accepting any dogs, unless there are special circumstances.

The canine population is also being segregated according to whether any more dogs display initial symptoms of the virus.

“What they are doing at the shelter is similar to what you would do at a hospital when some are placed in ICU and others aren’t,” said Fontenot.

Doctors from the LSU and University of Florida schools of veterinary medicine and officials from the State Department of Agriculture have visited the shelter and solicited opinions over the past several days.

Additionally LSU veterinarian have also surveyed the dog population and made recommendations regarding how the shelter could stop a potential spread of the virus, Fontenot said.

This week the remaining 130 dogs housed at the shelter will be given blood tests as a way of determining which of them has immune systems healthy enough to sustain any further spread of distemper, Fontenot said.

“We are going to get samples of all the dogs and then have the veterinarians put those samples under the microscope. That should tell us to a great extent which dogs will have the opportunity to be all right,” he said.

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The parish shelter is also not shipping out any of the dogs to other areas as part of St. Landry’s nationwide animal rescue effort, Fontenot said.

One of the dogs that was loaded from the shelter onto a rescue vehicle headed for Florida, showed signs of distemper, Fontenot said.

“The rescue group alerted us about the possibility of having distemper at our facility and that’s when we began taking action to solve the problem about three weeks ago,” said Fontenot.

Fontenot said the additional expense of the testing and blood sampling won’t cost the parish that much. “We also have a lot of benefactors and philanthropists who have always helped out and they are contributing also to the costs,” he said.

Dogs that are picked up in municipalities and normally brought to the shelter for adoption and housing will also been put on hold, Fontenot said.

“If someone reports a dog bite then that might be a different matter. Otherwise the towns and cities will be expected to keep the dogs until they can be accepted into the parish shelter,” he said.