LOS ANGELES TIMES - For a couple of months, Norco resident John Baynes desperately searched for answers.
His 10-year-old male Labrador named Colt dropped a quarter of his weight from his normally robust 80 pounds and no one knew why.
“We were told by the vet that he was in liver failure and that an ultrasound showed dark spots all over his liver,” he said of a July doctor’s appointment. “We were then told to put him down.”
In despair, Baynes searched out any info on dog ailments, eventually landing on a Blythe-area Facebook post that pointed to a flatworm parasite known as a liver fluke, discovered where Baynes and his dogs frequented.
The post highlighted the work of UC Riverside professor Adler Dillman, chair of the school’s Department of Nematology (study of roundworms) and an expert on parasitology, who first identified the liver fluke in California.