Dog dies after swim in bay off private beach

Friday, July 11, 2008

Polly Gatewood lives at the end of Tippett Road, south of Lexington Park, near a marsh and the bay. She has four dogs at her house. One stays confined by an invisible fence, but the other three frequently head down to the shore to play in the water. ‘‘The dogs loved to go to the beach,” she said.

On Tuesday, the young husky-mixed dog named Gizmo came back out of the bay waters with a jellyfish on its face and in its mouth. That evening, all three of the dogs got sick. Gizmo got so sick that he was put outside. He went missing and was found dead the next day in the garden.

Gatewood said she ‘‘never thought about the dangers of the bay.”

Gizmo was a heavy dog, between 70 and 80 pounds. Her Maltese dog weighs only 8 pounds and had to be hospitalized at St. Mary’s Veterinary Hospital for kidney and liver damage from ingesting jellyfish, she was told. The bill is probably going to come to $1,000, she said.

‘‘These jellyfish can be just as dangerous to children as to dogs,” she said. ‘‘It’s just a freak situation.”

She recommended if a dog gets sick after swimming in the salt water, it should be washed thoroughly with soap and water.

Asked about lethal sea nettles, Commission President Francis Jack Russell (D) said, ‘‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,” He was a waterman for much of his life and still takes students out on St. Mary’s River as part of the Chesapeake Bay Field Lab program.

‘‘I’ve never heard of anything like that,” agreed Kyle Rambo of the Natural Resources Office of Patuxent River Naval Air Station.

Drinking salt water is known to induce vomiting in humans and dogs, he said. ‘‘Jellyfish have stinging cells in their tentacles,” that shoot stinging darts under the skin, but there wouldn’t be enough toxin ingested to kill a dog of that size, he said.

It could have been an allergic reaction that killed the dog, he said.

The public beaches are all clear of bacterial infections right now, said Leslie Payne, public information officer for the St. Mary’s County Health Department. But the shoreline at the end of Tippett Road is private.