TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa’s Investigative Reporter Janna Clark looks into a virus that’s deadly to your unvaccinated dogs and tells you how to keep your dogs safe.
FOX23 previously reported that your dogs could be in danger because of a distemper outbreak with raccoons. It’s been happening in Tulsa in the Brookside area.
Now, we’re hearing about it in other parts of town.
Lisa Feagins didn’t know what to do when she saw a sick raccoon in her yard a few months ago.
Veterinarian Dr. Paul Welch said the raccoon showed signs of a viral disease called distemper.
“If they’re falling over, if they’re walking circles, if they’re just neurologically unstable, 99 percent of the time it’s distemper. When raccoons get it, it’s 100 percent fatal,” said Dr. Welch.
I asked him if dogs are vaccinated against distemper if they’re up to date on their vaccines.
He said if your dogs get distemper, they will probably die from it.
Lisa worried about her dog, Charley, until she verified, he’d been vaccinated.
“You think about your own pets and how communicable it is,” said Feagins.
The raccoon wasn’t the only sick one she saw. She found another in the street.
“He was clearly in a lot of misery,” Feagins said.
Then she and I came across a dead raccoon in the backyard of a vacant house.
“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible,” said Feagins. “I know it’s got to be all through Brookside.”
I first told you about this distemper outbreak in the Brookside area in November.
Lisa found the raccoons around 36th Street and Riverside Parkway. I also heard from people who saw sick raccoons near 45th Street and Riverside Parkway and 41st Street and Peoria Avenue.
“You’ll hit a distemper outbreak in a certain area, and it kills everybody that touches it,” said Dr. Welch.
I checked back in with Lisa. She said she hasn’t seen any sick or dead raccoons in the Brookside area lately.
But, over the past couple of months, I’ve seen your concerns about sick racoons in other Tulsa neighborhoods.
One message included a photo of a raccoon with distemper and said:
“People are reporting finding sick, dying raccoons in their yards. This is the 4th case so far.”
She’s talking about White City, a south Tulsa neighborhood near 81st Street and Tale Avenue.
Another Tulsan wrote, “We just had a raccoon in the street drain that looks paralyzed and whimpering last night but died this morning.”
This was near 81st Street and Mingo Road.
Someone else snapped a picture and wrote “There’s a raccoon that looks like it has distemper that’s been hobbling pretty slowly through everyone’s yards.”
Dr. Welch said it’s easy for a distemper outbreak to start.
“A sick raccoon will make it into the area and what happens is when the other raccoons get it, and literally everybody in the area just dies until it goes away,” said Dr. Welch.
Deborah McLaren lives near 41st Street and Yale Avenue, close to Whiteside Park.
She wrote me an email that said “We had a raccoon with distemper in our yard. It was so, so, so sad.”
I asked her why she sent me the email and she said she was very concerned for the raccoons.
Deborah said she came outside and saw a raccoon stumbling around in her yard.
“…Sort of staggering around and he looked really rough. Very lethargic, you know? Not really moving around a lot,” said McLaren.
I asked her if she had any idea what to do about it and she said she googled tips and eventually Deborah called the city and wildlife experts.
She said nobody was able to come that day and she didn’t know what to do with the animal.
The last place she saw the raccoon was by the gate.
“We had to leave him out in the yard overnight, and the next morning, he was gone,” said McLaren.
Deborah worried about letting her two dogs, Freida May and Harry, in the backyard so she updated their shits at the vet and even treated her yard.
“We ended up getting hydrogen peroxide spray and spraying all the areas where we had seen in the yard,” McLaren said. “I don’t know if anybody else takes it that seriously, but I don’t want my dogs to get distemper.”
I asked Deborah if she was worried about other people’s dogs too.
She said she was, which is why she went around the whole neighborhood and tried to talk to people about it.
Deborah said she saw another sick raccoon around 38th and Toledo Avenue, just a couple blocks away from Yale Avenue.
One Tulsan said, “I think the city should be responsible for this epidemic and have a hotline number to call, so if you find an animal or raccoon, the city can quickly come remove the raccoon.”
I asked the city about it, and they said Tulsans have called their hotline 311 about this problem.
The city said:
“While not a main responsibility of Tulsa Animal Services, we were able to capture a few and run tests…
The few raccoons that were tested at the time were negative for rabies but positive for distemper.”
The city told me that it got an influx of calls in October and November, but since then, the call volume has gone down.
“I do know this area has raccoon distemper and it hasn’t gone away. I’m thankful that you guys are following this and alerting people to what’s going on,” said McLaren. “We do have tons and tons of pets around here. It’s a growing concern because it does spread so easily.”
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