Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dogs dying from algae bloom in ponds

[video:youtube]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...rn-loss-their-pets-deadly-algae-n1041606[/video]

A sad end to a day of fun.

3 die in Austin

https://heavy.com/news/2019/08/austin-lake-blue-green-algae/

That's terrible...

Been keeping my female lab put up most of the summer. She loves swimming in a certain favorite greened-over cattle pond.No doubt it's probably 100,000+CFU of fecal coliform bacteria aside from the bloom.

My male dogs won't go there, theyre content with wading and laying down in the clear, cool spring-fed branch beside my front gates.

I wonder if that was around 60 years ago. Cousins and I would swim in grandads pond nearly every day of the summer, or does it require drinking the water?

I wonder if it affects cows and horses.

Bovines are tough

One can be shîtting in the water and another be drinking right behind that one's ass-end.

Unfortunately, this a common happening every year. Blue-green algae has been around for a couple billion years at least and is a factor in Earth developing an oxygen atmosphere. It is typically not visible to casual observation- that green "scum" seen on the surface of ponds is often duck weed which is actually beneficial.

Extended periods of temps over 80 degrees in shallow, still, dark/soft bottomed waters tend to develop blue/green algae. Current or cool temps tend to knock this algae back. I keep my dogs on a short leash during the warm months to lessen their exposure to blue/green algae. I don't obsess on it but I stay aware of the possibility.

Stagnant water with no movement is prone to grow that blue-green algae..

Hot temps help too.

Beware of what it looks like!

Tragic.

Unfortunately lake WInnebago here has this issue every year. You cannot lets pets swim and many beaches get shut down.
Too much runoff from surrounding farms and also lawn fertilizer.

We have several popular fishing reservoirs closed by algae blooms right now. It happens every year.

12 years ago I was hunting early season Teal in September with my sweet 7 year old GSP. She was one of the best bird dogs I've ever seen and loved to retrieve early season Teal and Wood ducks from the little ponds and streams we hunted .
We had one very small puddle we always had great luck with. It is only maybe 20 yards by 30 yards and surrounded by willows. It was hot and there was the usual scum on part of it. She retrieved 4 or 5 from that little puddle like we did every year. .
The next morning when I took her food to her kennel she came out really slow, disoriented . And walked right into the gate. It was plain she was blind and scared and I was terrified. Took her to the vet as fast as I could get there. I held her at the vets for an hour or more trying to give her some comfort while they did tests. I went back later that day and the vet mentioned that it could have been algae . I had never heard of it and she hadn't dealt with it but had called the Purdue vet school and that's what they suggested. Within two days she was acting right and worked cover like she did before, but was still blind . She just went by hearing and smell and my voice. I thought we could manage her life fine like that until I found her in her kennel 5 days later. The vet said she had possibly a seizure and a heat attack. I will never take that chance again. I still miss her , she was way to young.

My dad lost a lab some years ago in our farm pond....from some algae type poisoning...that dog lived to swim in that pond...

Nutrient pollution in the nation's waters is huge and algal blooms are symptomatic of the issue in many places. With it comes many issues, death among them.

When did Trump start doing this BS?

The pond at my gun club had a pretty bad algae bloom a couple years ago and my lab got an awful skin infection from swimming in it. There is no runoff of chemicals around it but the stream that feeds it must have brought in something toxic. I got off lucky as did my dog, now she doesn’t swim there anymore. Recently I heard of a man losing a leg to a bacterial infection from swimming in saltwater. Nothing seems to be safe anymore.

Man, unreal. I'm sorry to hear that. All my pointers have been part of family.

it's out here too

https://www.ksl.com/article/46617043/dangerous-toxins-force-closure-of-vernal-reservoir

Apparently Abiquiu Lake in NM has a blue-green bloom going on.