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A New Brunswick woman is looking for answers as she suffers the loss of two of her beloved dogs, following a visit to a Moose Jaw dog park last month.
Vanessa Forbes was entering the final leg of a cross-country road trip from Moncton to Edmonton to visit her daughter, when she stopped at the Small Dog Park at 1500 High St. West in Moose Jaw, SK.
Forbes says she normally avoids dog parks, but had wanted to give her travel companions – six Cavalier King Charles Spaniels – the chance to let off some steam.
“Everybody was energetic and bouncing around and excited to get out of the truck and actually run,” she said. “I just assumed that a licensed city dog park was going to be safe for them and it wasn’t.”
The Moose Jaw Dog Parks are located at 1500 High Street. (City of Moose Jaw website)
Forbes says upon entering the park, her dogs almost immediately ran over to some dog dishes on the ground and started drinking.
“I went over and I dumped them because that’s how things [diseases] get passed… but I didn’t think anything of it,” she said, explaining that she had jugs of filtered water waiting for all of them in her truck.
But Forbes said she snapped to attention several minutes later when she overheard another woman in the park ask, ‘Did you see that dog just fall over?’”
“‘I looked at the dog and I was like, ‘that’s my dog’,” Forbes said.
Vanessa Forbes’s dog Valerie became ill and died after visiting a small dog park in Moose Jaw, Sask. (Submitted by Vanessa Forbes)
Initially thinking they might be overheating, Forbes began to round the dogs up. It was only once everyone was back in the truck with the air conditioning blasting, that a closer look at her dog, called Valerie, told her something was seriously wrong.
“Her eyes were open and her tongue was out and there was foam and gruel around her mouth. I could see she was still breathing, but she wasn’t moving,” she said.
Forbes said that after yelling out to warn the other dog-owners in the park that her pets had been poisoned, she jumped in her truck, and “flew”.
“I did not stop for stop signs, I did not stop for lights,” she said.
She was only minutes away from the Moose Jaw Animal Clinic, but by the time she arrived, she said three of her dogs were in critical condition.
“Valerie did not make it,” Forbes said.
The Moose Jaw Animal Clinic declined to comment on the situation. Forbes said that after losing Valerie, she called off the rest of her trip.
“I left the clinic with my tailgate open. I didn’t even go to a hotel, I was too upset,” she said.
But it wasn’t over.
‘A secondary nightmare’
Back in Moncton more than a week later, Forbes says she lost a second dog, called Buttercup, to veterinary complications following the incident.
Buttercup had been pregnant.
“I am completely devastated. I lost two of my dogs and her puppies. I’m not wrapping my head around why this is happening and why it happened to them,” she said.
‘It’s like a secondary nightmare.”
Buttercup, one of Vanessa Forbes’s dogs. Forbes says Buttercup, who was pregnant, died this week as a result of complications following her visit to the Moose Jaw Dog Park in June. (Submitted by Vanessa Forbes)Water samples clear, City says
The City of Moose Jaw issued a statement Thursday saying it has received the results of water samples collected from the two dog parks in question.
The statement said the tests, conducted by the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Provincial Laboratory, “Confirm that all 10 samples of water collected from containers at the dog parks on June 26, and a separate sample from the outside tap connected to the city’s water distribution system, met Canadian drinking water quality standards.”
“While the water testing results did not identify any concerns with the drinking water supply, the City continues to review all available information related to this incident,” the statement said.
“The dog parks will remain temporarily closed while the city awaits and reviews the autopsy results from the deceased animal.”
Forbes said she is paying to have the Moose Jaw Animal Clinic send all of her dogs’ stomach contents to a special lab for testing.
“Dogs don’t drop dead and foam at the mouth with their tongue hanging out for no reason,” she said, explaining that the latest results from the vet had come back as ‘inconclusive’.
“I’m not going to stop until I get answers.”
Answers don’t always come cheap — Forbes said she has incurred about $12,000 in veterinary bills and associated testing since the initial June 26 dog park visit.
She has started a GoFundMe page in an effort to offset the costs.