Pithyosis is one terror of a disease as there is no effective cure for it other than surgical excision. Once it colonizes the gut it has destroyed it before it is diagnosed. I have diagnosed around six cases and no matter what we did, the universities did, or experimental treatments tried, they all failed.
Additional information at this link:
http://pythiosis.com/description-of-pythiosis/
According to what I am reading, the spores can also attach to grass. We all know how prone dogs are to eat grass on occasion.
Pythiosis is also a fairly new phenomenon in the U.S. Even if you live in a cooler climate, if you let your dog drink out of streams and ponds, there are other things like giardia he can pick up. Make sure your pooch has plenty of clean, fresh water in his bowl, so he’s not as tempted to drink from unsafe sources.
Pythiosis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pythium hyphae
Pythiosis is a rare and deadly tropical disease caused by the fungus-like Pythium insidiosum. Long regarded as being caused by a fungus, the causative agent was not discovered until 1987. It occurs most commonly in horses, dogs and humans, and there have been isolated cases in other large mammals.[1] The disease is contracted after exposure to stagnant freshwater such as swamps, ponds, lakes, and rice paddies. Pythium insidiosum is different from other members of the genus in that human and horse hair, skin, and decaying animal and plant tissue are chemoattractants for its zoospores.[2] Additionally, it is the only member in the genus known to infect mammals, while other members are pathogenic to plants and are responsible for some very well known diseases in plants.
Yikes.