Wilmington woman's 3 dogs die after swimming in neighborhood pond

WILMINGTON, N.C. — A women's three dogs are dead after being in and around water in Wilmington, WTVD reports.

Melissa Martin said she took her dogs to a pond in her neighborhood to go swimming and when she got home to give them baths, all three dogs started having seizures and died later that day.

"We joke that we used to give our dogs bottled water. We would never put them in a situation like this. They were everything," Martin said.

Martin said she was told her dogs got into blue-green algae or cyanobacteria, which lives in fresh and saltwater, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said that children and dogs are the most susceptible to the algae.

Martin said she wants to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else..

"By the end of this year, I plan to contact whoever I need to contact to make sure we have signs up at every body of water like this that says it's toxic," Martin said. "Because nobody knows. Kids could get in it and it could poison them, as well."

The CDC also said cyanobacteria usually multiplies and blooms when the water is warm, stagnant and filled with nutrients from sources including fertilizer runoff or septic tank overflows.

Cox Media Group