It took 15 minutes for the play date to turn deadly.
Melissa Martin and Denise Mintz’s three dogs — Abby, Izzy and Harpo — had spent a recent Thursday evening romping in the mud and chasing their ball at a pond in Wilmington, N.C. The evening getaway was a welcome reprieve from the late-summer heat.
But unbeknownst to the dogs and their owners, the relentless sun had also made the pond a bathtub of toxins. A poisonous microscopic bacteria called blue-green algae had grown in the water, a threat Martin and Mintz did not know about until it was too late.
On their way home, Abby, a white West Highland terrier, fell first and began to seize, Martin told CNN. They rushed to the veterinary hospital, where Izzy, also a Westie, began seizing as well. Six-year-old Harpo, a doodle mix who worked as a therapy dog for hospital patients, fell ill too.
By midnight, Martin told CNN, all three dogs were dead.
“We are gutted,” Martin wrote on Facebook soon after. “I wish I could do today over. I would give anything to have one more day with them.”
Since then, another family has made headlines for the loss of their border collie, Arya, who died from what their vet suspected was blue-algae poisoning after swimming in a Georgia lake. And in Austin, Texas, in early August, three dogs died because of the same neurotoxins, their owners said, and the city closed the lake where the dogs had been swimming.
Martin told CNN she now hopes to help prevent more dog deaths by educating pet owners about the deadly algae blooms and advocating for warning signs near ponds, lakes and canals where the toxins have taken over.
“I will not stop until I make positive change,” she told CNN. “I will not lose my dogs for nothing.”
A Go Fund Me page had raised more than $3,000 to help Martin complete her mission.
“I can promise you every penny raised will be used to raise awareness and get signs and information out,” Martin wrote on Facebook.
Dangerous algal blooms are a “major environmental problem” in all 50 states that scientists believe will continue to wreak havoc on U.S. waterways with the rising threat of climate change, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Red tide algal blooms have killed marine life on the Florida and Mississippi coasts.
Toxic algae can affect the nervous system, liver and kidneys in humans and animals, though children and dogs are most susceptible because they tend to wade in shallow areas on the edge of ponds or lakes where the algal blooms are concentrated, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. It can be especially dangerous for dogs, who drink the water or ingest the blooms by licking themselves.
To thrive, algal blooms need sunlight and stagnant, nutrient-rich water, which is most common in lakes, ponds and canals but can also be present along the coasts of bays, gulfs and oceans.
When water is slow-flowing, it warms faster — allowing toxic bacteria to thrive and the algae to grow faster and thicker. Additionally, algal blooms absorb sunlight which warms the water further.
