MAUI: Dog dies of rat lungworm disease Illness rare, with no cases among Maui County residents this year
When 4-year-old Kili first developed a cough of sorts, the owners of the mixed breed pitbull thought he was choking on something.
But then things got worse — he suffered an infection of his central nervous system, lost weight, hid from light and had muscle tremors, among all sorts of other issues.
Veterinarians at Kahului Animal Hospital couldn’t figure out what was wrong and ran numerous tests while treating Kili over the course of several weeks from the end of January. Eventually, they diagnosed rat lungworm disease, an illness that’s rare on Maui aside from a spike in cases in 2017.
