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Sick pooch

A Thunder Bay couple believes their dog may have contracted Lyme disease from a tick at Chapples Park. Tracie Smith learned her dog Chance has the disease after taking him to the veterinarian Friday morning.
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Tracie Smith learned her dog Chance had Lyme disease Friday. (Jodi Lundmark)

A Thunder Bay couple believes their dog may have contracted Lyme disease from a tick at Chapples Park.

Tracie Smith learned her dog Chance has the disease after taking him to the veterinarian Friday morning.

"Initially he had soreness and stiffness in a sore shoulder," she said. "A couple of days later that moved to a rear leg and in just a couple of days it was very evident that the pain had progressed. He stopped using that leg altogether."

Following that and a loss of appetite in the animal and Smith and her husband did some Internet research and found Chance’s symptoms fit with Lyme disease.
While not ideal, the couple was relieved to hear it was Lyme disease ailing the dog because the alternative was a bone tumor.

"We were actually crossing our fingers and hoping for Lyme disease because it meant that it would be treatable," Smith said.

The couple believes Chapples Park is where Chance got the tick after Smith took their two dogs to the park for a walk a couple of weeks ago.

"I wandered off of the path, through the long grass to let the dogs take a drink out of the river," she said. "Our other dog – our black Labrador – we found a tick on him after that. He’s got much shorter hair and less fur so it was easy to find a tick on him and Chance, he’s got thicker hair and it’s easy to think we may have missed a tick on him."

Smith’s husband Robert Watson said the vet told them Chance was the first case of Lyme disease they’ve seen this year and he said while the symptoms are treatable, the dog will always have the disease.

The expectation is Chance will respond quickly to the antibiotics and he has pain medication to help him handle the discomfort, said Smith.

The experience is concerning, Smith said, noting there is little she can do to protect her dogs.

"You can get the shots, put the medication on, put the collars on, but we’ve done that in the past when we lived out in the country and they would still have ticks on them," she said. "The best thing I can tell people is to check your dogs regularly."





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