THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Memphis Animal Shelter has euthanized as many as 50 animals because of an outbreak of distemper, which officials said was a difficult but necessary decision to protect other animals from catching the virus.

The Commercial Appeal reported that the animals were destroyed on Saturday. Shelter director Matt Pepper says workers did their best to protect other animals.

“It’s not a pleasant experience,“ said Rebecca Coleman, the city’s veterinary medical director. ”It was a hard pill to swallow.”

Coleman said distemper was the suspected cause of an unusually high number of upper respiratory conditions among the animals at the shelter. Necropsies on animals that died after being adopted confirmed the diagnosis of distemper.

“We have been in a state of heightened cleanliness,” with workers using bleach to clean and kill the virus, Coleman said. “We had a situation where it was working its way into becoming epidemic in the population.”

Virginia Zisson, who adopted a shelter dog that later had to be euthanized because of distemper, said shelter officials should have quarantined the dogs, rather than destroying them. Zisson called it an overreaction.

Pepper said it will be easier to quarantine animals in a new facility that is set to open this summer.

Angie Zinkus of the Germantown Parkway Animal Hospital said the distemper virus is highly contagious.

“If you have multiple dogs crowded together, it can spread like wildfire,” Zinkus said. “Unless you isolate these pets, you can’t get rid of it. It’s a horrible disease.”

Both vets said the underlying problem is that a lot of pets in the city have not been inoculated.