Update on Animal Management Facility

Published on 21 October 2024

On Thursday 10 October, Council closed the Animal Management Facility following a positive test for canine parvovirus from a dog surrendered to the facility.

Canine parvovirus is a very serious disease that spread rapidly between dogs at the facility. The facility is not an animal hospital and with veterinary advice and attendance, we made the difficult but necessary decision to have all 21 dogs euthanised.

We would like to thank the local veterinary community for their support and expertise over the last week, your assistance and direction has been much appreciated.

While we had initially intended to have the facility closed for at least two weeks, the Animal Management Facility will be closed to the public until further notice.

This will allow us to conduct a deep clean of the whole facility, to prevent future contamination from this incident. While canine parvovirus is not an airborne virus, nor travels through soil, the deep clean includes removing contaminated soil from the facility, alongside the simpler task of cleaning all hard surfaces. Removing the contaminated soil is vital to ensure the facility will be safe when it re-opens, even if this means we are closed for longer than we would like to be. All materials, PPE and rubbish from the facility have been treated as contaminated biohazard waste and disposed of accordingly.

We would like to remind the community that canine parvovirus is a very serious disease. The disease came to the facility through a surrendered dog, which means parvovirus is in the community. We strongly encourage our community to ensure their dogs are vaccinated, and to be alert and keep an eye on their dog’s health.

We will not be able to receive lost dogs at the facility and we will not be managing dogs at the facility until further notice. If the public has a lost dog that needs to have its microchip scanned to identify an owner, please take it to a local vet or get in touch with the team on phone via 6285 6269 for Animal Management Officers to attend.