Devastating illness closes Stockton animal shelter

STOCKTON — The Stockton Animal Shelter was closed Saturday and will remain closed until noon Tuesday while officials deal with the aftermath of a potentially fatal disease.

A dog brought into the shelter in March was euthanized after officials there determined it had a contagious respiratory illness called streptococcus zooepidemicus.

The disease, while more common in horses, is contagious to dogs and cats.

In 2007, when it struck a shelter in Las Vegas, officials euthanized every dog there, more than 1,000.

Phillip Zimmerman, director of the Stockton shelter, said dogs with lots of exposure to that original dog have been euthanized, and a few others were likely to be over the weekend. On Friday, nine exposed dogs were euthanized with 15 others that had been at the shelter for a long time and were unlikely to have been adopted, Zimmerman said.

Other dogs at the shelter are being treated with antibiotics. No cats were exposed. As of Saturday, there were 206 animals at the shelter.

Although the shelter will reopen on Tuesday, Zimmerman said people who already have animals at home should not take home a shelter dog until they have completed their course of antibiotics, which should take 10 days.

The decision to euthanize any animal is difficult, Zimmerman said.

Part of the reason is the overall health of all the animals. The Stockton shelter has partnerships with other shelters that must trust in the health of animals in Stockton.

“We can’t lose those relationships,” Zimmerman said.

The streptococcus zooepidemicus breaks down lung tissue, causing a gruesome and painful death.

It was a veterinarian supplied by the San Francisco SPCA who suspected the dog might have more than kennel cough, Zimmerman said, underscoring the importance of the shelter’s partnerships and the need for veterinary expertise, especially when so many animals are housed in close quarters.

“We were lucky our vet thought this might be something more,” Zimmerman said. University of California, Davis pathologists confirmed the findings from tissue samples.

He underscored the difficulty of the decision to euthanize the exposed dogs.

“You have to look at (what is best for) the entire shelter population.”