A parvovirus outbreak has been identified at the Occupy San Francisco camp, with at least three dogs affected by the highly contagious and potentially very serious viral disease. The San Francisco SPCA has visited the camp and their temporary clinic was attended by "dozens" of dog owners (indicating lots of dogs at the camp).
New York hotel-cat restrictions
New York City’s Algonquin Hotel has a feline tradition of sorts – namely having a resident cat to greet people in the lobby. Matlida III is the tenth in a line of hotel cats that dates back to 1932. She has her own page on the hotel’s website, and her own email address. Yet
MRSA control in animals…Finnish style
As MRSA in animals gets more attention, there have been increasing efforts to develop guidelines to reduce the incidence and impact of this important zoonotic pathogen. Among these are a set of recommendations developed in Finland for the prevention and control of MRSA infections in animals (or metisilliiniresistentti Staphylococcus aureus, as they would say
More canine flu in New York and New Jersey
Canine influenza continues its rather puzzling spread through the US. After emerging years ago, it has spread sporadically, causing some large regional outbreaks but sparing many areas, and it has moved about in a pattern that’s pretty unusual for a highly contagious virus.
There have been various reports of canine influenza activity in the New
Toilet research
The scope of research that’s being done these days is astounding. Somewhere, someone’s working on a project that will lead to a Nobel Prize in medicine. Other research will gather less critical acclaim but still have a big impact on science. Some research is more basic but can result in important preliminary information. And some
When does research become bioterrorism?
One of the big doomsday scenarios of the past couple of decades has been an H5N1 avian influenza pandemic. Human infections with this virus have occurred in various parts of the world (mainly southeast Asia) and death rates are quite scarey (50% or higher). Fortunately, the virus does not transmit efficiently between people, so human
Raw diets…again
CTV has a consumer reports segment and a recent topic involved feeding pets “natural” diets (although no one ever defined what that really means). In the report on the CTV Consumer Alert website (it’s currently about the third story into the video if you just press play, or you can shortcut to it using the
equIDblog has moved to Worms & Germs!
Unfortunately, because of funding challenges (translation… there was no more money), we were no longer able to maintain our equine infectious disease blog (equIDblog) as a separate site. However, based on the positive feedback we had and the amount of traffic on the original site, we still think it serves a role and are dedicated
Beat The Bugs: New Biosecurity Venture For Equine Guelph
Equine Guelph has received funding for Beat the Bugs, a new equine biosecurity venture. The program has been funded by the Agricultural Biosecurity Program, a Canadian federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
From ongoing cases of strangles to large outbreaks of EHV, it’s abundantly clear that infection control is a critical area for the equine industry
New guinea pig…new ringworm outbreak
A Kitchener, Ontario family is dealing with a household outbreak of ringworm, likely contracted from a new pet guinea pig. Ringworm is a fungal infection cause by a few different types of fungi. Some ringworm fungi are able to infect both people and animals, and those can be spread in households from direct contact