We Got Lucky With the Mystery Dog Illness
In late July 1980, a five-month-old Doberman pinscher puppy in Washington, D.C., started throwing up blood. It died the next day at an animal hospital, one of many pets that suffered that year from a new illness, parvovirus. “This is the worst disease I’ve ever seen in dogs,” a local veterinarian told The Washington Post, in an article describing the regional outbreak. It killed so fast that it left pet owners in disbelief, he said.
The world was in the middle of a canine pandemic. The parvovirus, which was first recognized in 1978, can live for months outside the body, spreading not just from animal to animal but through feces, sneaking into the yards of dog owners via a bit of excrement stuck to the bottom of a person’s shoe. It quickly traveled across countries and continents, infecting thousands and possibly millions of dogs mentions the city of Chicago losing 300 dogs by July of that year, and South Carolina losing more than 700 in just two months.
