Not only did the Kentucky River Regional Animal Shelter kill over 200 dogs due to “exposure” to canine distemper, they got a local vet to justify it to the media – a vet who says she’s never “known of” any distemper cases in 14 years. A different vet, who serves on the pound’s board, describes distemper to the TV news reporter as “mainly a community problem”.
Now that all that is out of the way, and since the reporter did not ask: WHY? Why didn’t the shelter reach out to the public to see if anyone could offer temporary quarantine to dogs who were asymptomatic? Why didn’t they quarantine asymptomatic dogs themselves? Did they even try to save any of these dogs?
The article says vaccination and cage cleaning are important to preventing distemper. Why wasn’t the shelter leading by example and providing vaccination upon intake and disease prevention cleaning protocols? How is distemper “mainly a community problem” if the shelter is failing to meet minimum standards and responds to disease outbreak with a mass killing?