My barn has beach access to one of the great lakes. The county and state run beaches/parks do daily water quality monitoring and I always check before riding down and going to for a walk (or swim) in the water. This afternoon, I checked and both nearby beaches reported the water quality as “good”.
This evening, I saw one of the parks posted that an algal bloom has been observed at the nearby park after I had already rode down. They said testing has shown the presence of a harmful algae bloom, but algal toxins fall below the unsafe level. Visitors are encouraged to maintain a level of awareness while visiting and they will continue to monitor the situation.
I don’t think my guy ingested much, if any, of the water but he was nosing around playing in it and walking in it. Reading online, toxins produced by the algae are harmful to animals drinking the contaminated water. Microsystin, one of the toxins, affects the gastrointestinal tract, causing colic and diarrhea in horses. In severe cases, liver damage from the toxin can be fatal, especially in dogs that seem to be more susceptible than some other animals. At the very worst, it can cause acute death.
We were down around 7 hours ago and I did a check on him tonight and everything seems fine, happy gut sounds and normal demeanor. There were no visible blooms where I was, though that doesn’t insure the algae aren’t there.
I overly worry about everything, is this cause for anything other than monitoring at this point?
Thankfully, this summer has been relatively mild. Further west, the lake gets it worse and many area issue boil alerts. We don’t typically get it that bad where we’re at, but it’s close enough that water quality is monitored daily.
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