I posted a couple of months ago about the death of our beloved springer spaniel Robbie. He died within a few hours of
our arrival in Bulgaria. The vet thought he had been poisoned.

We now think we know what killed him - blue green algae. This algae is found in ponds, puddles, streams etc and looks
harmless, but kills within hours.
Robbie did have a very small lap of water when we were out for a walk.

The symptoms include vomiting, diarrhoea with blood, breathlessness, convulsions, shaking, coldness, pale coloured mucous membranes
eg inside of mouth.
There is no antidote or cure.

Please please look out for this stuff and don't let your animals drink from ponds etc. Swimming in it can be dangerous too as the animal
will lick themself dry.
We don't want anyone else to go through the same distress as us.

Scunnered for that information, I am sure you will have save a lot of beloved animals with this post.

Oddy

Scunnered wrote:

I posted a couple of months ago about the death of our beloved springer spaniel Robbie. He died within a few hours of
our arrival in Bulgaria. The vet thought he had been poisoned.

We now think we know what killed him - blue green algae. This algae is found in ponds, puddles, streams etc and looks
harmless, but kills within hours.
Robbie did have a very small lap of water when we were out for a walk.

The symptoms include vomiting, diarrhoea with blood, breathlessness, convulsions, shaking, coldness, pale coloured mucous membranes
eg inside of mouth.
There is no antidote or cure.

Please please look out for this stuff and don't let your animals drink from ponds etc. Swimming in it can be dangerous too as the animal
will lick themself dry.
We don't want anyone else to go through the same distress as us.

Many thanks for your advice, especially as your experience of this algae was so distressing. It is certainly something to avoid when walking my dogs, but of course very difficult to stop a dog drinking the wretched stuff even though our dogs are always walked on leads. Must hope for the best when taking them out for a walk.

How do we recognise it, compared to other harmless kinds?