Confirmation pending on third distemper case in Horry shelter

On Nov. 24 at 9: 21 a.m. Horry County animal shelter officials received confirmation from the Clemson Veterinary Diagnostic Center in Columbia that a dog sheltered at the Conway facility tested positive for the deadly distemper virus.

Later that afternoon, Dennis Wallace of Longs adopted his dog he renamed “Maggie” from the shelter after his pet of 15 years, a Labrador retriever, was put to sleep on Nov. 14.

The facility didn’t shut down to address the virus until Dec. 8 after News13 broke news of the outbreak that morning.

Wallace said no one at the shelter notified him of the confirmed case of distemper before he left the shelter with his new dog on Nov. 24, “On the same day they got confirmation of distemper, they let me take this dog home and to this very moment, I still have not heard one word from them,” Wallace said.

Wallace took his dog home, but said he had to wait until Monday Dec. 1 to have a veterinarian check his dog because vets in the area were booked up or closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

But, Maggie started showing signs of a virus Wallace said eventually took her life.

Maggie stopped eating on Nov. 28, according to Wallace and the symptoms got worse, fast, “She must have had about 50 seizures, one right after another right in a row. She’d convulse, fall over, foam at the mouth,” Wallace said.

Wallace took his dog to the vet on Dec. 1 where the doctor diagnosed Maggie with distemper, “She said boy, if I didn’t know any better I’d swear this dog had distemper, but my vet said it can’t be; we haven’t seen distemper here for a long time.”

The vet kept Maggie quarantined before releasing her to Wallace to have another vet work on the case.

The second vet also diagnosed Maggie with distemper and started treating her for the deadly virus.

News13 met Wallace on Dec. 9 when he went to the facility to meet with the shelter’s director, Renee Macklen about his suffering dog, but was unable to reach Macklen.

Wallace said he instead told the shelter’s director of operations, Rita Rhodes, about his case, “She took my paperwork and photocopied it and assured me Mrs. Macklen would see this and I haven’t heard anything; it’s been one week today,” Wallace said.

It was also one week ago that Wallace’s vet euthanized Maggie after more than two weeks of showing signs of distemper.

“It’s very inhumane the way they treat people, the way they don’t want to talk to people; they don’t want to acknowledge it,” Wallace said.

The second vet who diagnosed Maggie with distemper sent tissue samples off to the Clemson University lab in Columbia after she was euthanized on Nov. 10, according to Wallace.

Those results should be in later this week.

“I had to call and leave a message with somebody to tell them that the dog was euthanized and they should realize that dog was just another that they can add into what they did. And, it’s too bad because the dog should have been euthanized before I even got it,” Wallace told News13.

The vet bills on Maggie totaled more than $1,000.

“There’s a certain, reasonable expectation that when you go to the Humane Society that they’re going to give you a dog that you’re not going to take home and die,” Wallace said.

News13 tried contacting shelter director Renee Macklen by phone Tuesday, but our calls were not returned as of this posting.

The Horry County Humane Society’s Board of Directors will hold a public meeting Wednesday night to address the distemper outbreak.

The meeting is set for 6 p.m. at the Chapin Memorial Library located at the intersection of 14th Avenue and Kings Highway in Myrtle Beach.

You can count on News13 to continue to follow this developing story.