By Rick Rouan, The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS – The Franklin County Dog Shelter now is telling people who adopted dogs that might have been exposed to distemper to take their pets to a private veterinarian instead of returning to the shelter with them.
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The Northland-area shelter previously was offering free medical care for those dogs, but Director Don Winstel said Wednesday that the shelter staff is overwhelmed dealing with quarantined dogs and new arrivals.
“Right now, we don’t have the capability to handle a lot of sick dogs,” he said.
The shelter stopped adopting out dogs on Friday, six days after it confirmed that a dog euthanized Aug. 31 had distemper. Every dog in the shelter was exposed to the potentially deadly, contagious respiratory disease.
While the dog with the original distemper diagnosis was in the shelter on Tamarack Boulevard, 434 dogs were adopted from the shelter and 146 were transferred to rescue organizations. The county is sending letters alerting people who adopted those dogs about the outbreak.
On Wednesday, Winstel said the shelter had confirmed two additional cases of distemper in dogs that were euthanized at the shelter. That brings the total to three distemper cases. A total of 14 dogs have been tested for distemper. Six were negative, and the shelter is awaiting results for five of them. A total 64 dogs have been euthanized, either because they had distemper or showed severe medical symptoms of it, or weren’t suitable for quarantine.