A third family says their dog from Meridian’s Puppy Shack got parvo. This one died.
Shortly after two puppies purchased from a Meridian business survived bouts of the contagious disease parvovirus, a third family said their puppy died after a veterinarian diagnosed the illness.
Each of the dogs came from Surf’s Up Puppy Shack, which opened on Oct. 10 near Fairview Avenue and Eagle Road. Matt Milligan, the store’s owner, said he doesn’t believe the cases are connected, and feels confident that his cleaning procedures and vaccination schedules are effective.
“I’m in the live animal business, and living animals are like people or kids,” Milligan told the Statesman in a phone interview. “Disease, sickness and colds and flu and viruses are things that they have.”
Critics on social media have pointed to Milligan’s previous stores in Utah, which also faced allegations of spreading parvo, and some Idahoans are calling for better oversight of the sale of dogs.
Frank and Julie Williams, whose puppy died three days after they bought him from Surf’s Up, said they just don’t want other families to go through the pain and grief theirs has.
Third parvo case from Surf’s Up Puppy Shack
The Williamses bought their “shorkie poo” puppy — a mix of Shih Tzu, Yorkshire terrier and poodle — from Surf’s Up Puppy Shack on Friday, Oct. 11, the day after the store opened. They’d seen an ad for the store on Facebook and planned to go that weekend, but Julie said she was too excited to wait until Saturday. She and Frank went to the store and fell in love with the small black puppy.
“I was like, ‘That’s him,’” Julie said.
The couple left the store with their puppy, and named him Bear.
“We were all over the moon,” Julie said.
Bear wasn’t eating at first, but Julie said she thought the puppy was just adjusting to his new home. By Saturday afternoon, he had started to drink water but later threw it up. That evening, Bear also started having diarrhea.
Julie said she was in constant communication with Milligan once the puppy began throwing up. When the diarrhea started, Milligan suggested that the puppy could have parvo, she said, a highly contagious and fairly common illness in dogs.
That’s when the Williams family headed to the emergency vet at All Valley Animal Care Center.
Because parvo can be spread through “direct dog-to-dog contact and contact with contaminated feces, environments, or people,” the Williamses were asked to wait outside All Valley to avoid possibly contaminating the vet’s office. Employees administered a parvo test outside, which returned a positive result. At around 2 a.m. on Oct. 13, the family went to a quarantine room at the vet’s office to discuss a treatment plan.
While at the vet’s office, Bear puked twice more and had another bout of diarrhea, Julie said.
“The vet was like, ‘He has no (fat) stores, he’s just tiny,’” Julie said. The dog weighed 2.3 pounds at the vet’s office.
Their veterinarian said the dog’s outlook wasn’t good. Ultimately, the Williamses opted against aggressive treatment. They asked the vet to give Bear some IV fluids and anti-nausea medication, and told Milligan what they’d decided.
“He said, ‘If you choose not to treat, return him to me,’” Julie said.
Frank Williams met Milligan at a gas station at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday and returned the puppy.
“We just waited and prayed,” Julie said.
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Surf’s Up owner treated puppy for parvo
Milligan said he took Bear to his store on Sunday while his family went to church. He said the puppy was kept in a quarantine room in the back.
According to veterinarian Dr. Alix McGrath, director of shelter medicine at the Idaho Humane Society, it would be “very concerning” to put a dog with a positive parvo diagnosis in an environment that’s not completely isolated.
“We’ll isolate patients immediately if we suspect parvo, because the risks are just too grave,” McGrath said.
After church, Milligan said, he took the dog home with him.
On Monday morning, Milligan sent the Williamses a video of the puppy in what appears to be the same steel livestock troughs he uses to contain puppies in the store. Other dogs can be heard barking in the background. Milligan told the Statesman that he has similar troughs set up at his home.
Milligan said he continued giving the puppy IV fluids and high-calorie canine dietary supplement called Nutri-Cal. He felt like the puppy was improving.
“I was pretty encouraged because the puppy had drank water twice ... about a ramekin of water,” Milligan said.
When Milligan went to check on the puppy around 4 p.m. on Oct. 14, Bear had died. He texted the Williams family: “We lost him.”
That Thursday, Milligan gave the family a refund of the $533 they had paid for dog. He also offered them other, more expensive puppies, which the Williamses turned down. They’ve cleaned their house with bleach in an effort to ensure there’s no trace of parvovirus, but Julie said she’s still apprehensive about bringing another dog home.
“We’ve been told that bringing another puppy into our house would not be advisable,” she said.
Other parvo cases
The Williamses’ puppy was the third dog from Surf’s Up to be diagnosed with parvo within the space of about a week. Two miniature Australian shepherd puppies that Milligan sold before the store’s official opening also had the illness but survived.
Rebecca and Steven Randall bought their dog, Kaycee, from Milligan on Oct. 6 in the parking lot of the shopping center where the store is located. Kaycee was diagnosed with parvo on Oct. 9. Wesley and Regan Atkinson bought their puppy, Finley, at the Puppy Shack store on Oct. 7. Finley was diagnosed with parvo on Oct. 13. Milligan refunded both owners.
Milligan told the Statesman that he doesn’t believe the incidents were connected.
“There was no cross-contamination, we didn’t have foot traffic (when the Aussies were sold),” Milligan said.
He previously said he couldn’t be sure whether the mini Aussies had gotten the virus, which has an average incubation period of 3 to 7 days, at his store. In Bear’s case, Milligan said he thinks a customer brought parvo into the store.
“What I’ve come to conclude, I think somebody must have been a carrier, come in and touched some specific puppies,” he said. “I can clean all day long ... we can vaccinate like crazy, but if somebody’s carrying it on them, it’s invisible.”
How to prevent parvo
Milligan said he cleans his store with bleach and parvo-killing disinfectants. He also asks customers to use hand sanitizer before touching any puppies and in between each litter they pet or hold.
“You never know what the public might touch,” said McGrath, the IHS veterinarian.
She said parvo can be passed through contact with contaminated clothing, hands, surfaces or, most commonly, from puppy to puppy. She also said it’s possible the puppies contracted the virus prior to arriving at Surf’s Up.
Milligan previously told the Statesman that he tests for contaminants and performs home inspections before accepting a litter from a breeder.
In addition, he said, all puppies in his store have had at least one vaccination. Bear was just under 8 weeks old when the Williams family bought him, and he had received one vaccination, according to records Milligan gave the family.
“(Parvo) is a concern, and this is why I vaccinate,” Milligan said, pointing to his previous pet stores in Utah. “We’ve probably given over 20,000 vaccinates in the last four years, so there’s no way to quantify how much disease we have prevented. But it’s always news to somebody if a puppy gets sick.”
Milligan said disease prevention is his job, and something he feels he’s excelling at.
“I not only feel that I’m doing it to the best of my ability, I can say with quite a bit of confidence that I’m doing it better than 99% of the community and the dog community,” he said. “I’m not only confident in the care and preventative care we provide, I’m stinkin’ proud of it.”
Frank Williams said he doesn’t think Milligan’s measures are working.
“Bottom line for me is the dog died,” Frank said.
Animal Care and Control officers with the Idaho Humane Society visited Surf’s Up last month after receiving “several reports of puppies suffering from (parvo).“ To date, IHS has received three complaints from people who purchased dogs at Surf’s Up.
When officers went to Surf’s Up, Milligan was compliant, and the officers found no violations of Idaho law, according to IHS spokeswoman Kristine Schellhaas.
“When we met, the facility was clean,” Schellhaas said, adding that officers can enforce only the laws that are on the books. “For all intents and purposes, (Milligan) was doing everything he needed to be doing.”
Surf’s Up owner claimed no other issues with parvo
Julie Williams said her family has no hard feelings toward Milligan.
“We don’t want to bash anyone or malign anyone,” she said. “We just want the truth out there.”
Julie said she didn’t realize others had similar experiences until she started noticing “angry” reactions on Surf’s Up Facebook posts. She started researching online and “opened a Pandora’s box” of claims against Milligan, including a viral post from Atkinson, the Boise man whose mini Aussie was diagnosed with parvo on the same day as Bear.
On Oct. 26, a friend of the family mentioned local news station KTVB’s reporting on the two other parvo cases associated with Surf’s Up. Julie watched the segment, in which Milligan said he hadn’t had any issues since opening the store. Milligan told the Statesman the same thing on Oct. 22. That didn’t sit well with Julie.
“It’s like it never happened,” she said. “We want to say it did happen, and our puppy’s short life mattered to us.”
She said she hopes other families will do their due diligence and be familiar with diseases like parvo before bringing a puppy home.
“Now, fortunately and unfortunately, we’re well-educated, but it came at a price,” she said.
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 12:53 PM.
