We’ve come a long way in terms of medical diagnostic technology in recent years. It’s now cheap and easy to identify a wide range of viruses and bacteria, including some we’ve never seen before. However, our ability to find pathogens has outpaced our ability to understand the role they may (or may not) play in
Giant Kidney Worm in Dogs
Imagine you’re a vet doing an exploratory abdominal surgery in a dog. You’re poking around in the belly and feel something abnormal. You grab it and as you pull it out of the abdomen to have a look, you see it’s a red tubular structure. As you continue to pull (and pull, and pull), it
Isolation of SARS-CoV-2-Exposed Animals in Animal Shelters
Throughout the pandemic, countless decisions have had to be made, often with limited data. As more information becomes available, guidance and recommendation are updated. That sometimes upsets people, but it’s a good thing because it means we know more. If no recommendations had changed since early 2020, it would mean that we were really intuitive
Preventing Rabies in Imported Dogs
As per yesterday’s post, another rabid imported dog was identified in Ontario, again from Iran. What’s particularly surprising about this case is the very long incubation period. The dog didn’t develop signs of rabies until over 6 months after importation, and it was confirmed that it was infected with canine-variant rabies (consistent with strains
Imported Canine Rabies in Ontario – Again
For the second time in 7 months, rabies has been identified in a dog in Ontario that was imported from Iran through a rescue organization. The first case was detected in July 2021 in an adult dog that started to develop signs of rabies within 10 days of arrival in Canada, and was euthanized 2
2021 US Rabies Recap
Five human deaths due to rabies were reported in the US in 2021, the highest annual case count in the last decade. Obviously, that’s still a very small number overall and pales in comparison to other infectious diseases in the US, and to rabies deaths in other parts of the world like Asia and
Canine Flu and a Bit of Geopolitics?
Since we’re still seeing more respiratory disease in dogs pretty widely across North America (see previous blog posts on this topic for more info), I get asked about canine influenza a lot. My general responses are:
- Canada: As far as we know, we don’t have canine influenza in Canada. It was introduced
More About a Potential Dog-Origin Coronavirus in People
As a journal Associate Editor and reviewer, I see lots of manuscripts about “new” viruses. I tend not to get too excited about most of them, because “new” is usually actually just “new to us” (or newly identified), because as technology improves, we are able to identify lots of viruses that we’ve been living with
Canine Influenza: California
After a couple of years of very little apparent canine influenza activity in the US, the virus seems to have come back with a vengeance in some parts of California. Canine H3N2 influenza came to North America from Asia in approximately 2015 and caused outbreaks in many areas, but then seemed to slip into
Update: COVID-19 in Animals Review Part 2: Dogs
There’s not as much to update about SARS-CoV-2 in dogs as there was in cats. We have more numbers than we did before, but the overall issues in dogs and our understanding of them haven’t really changed.
Spoiler alert: dogs and owners can both relax, as the risks are very limited.
Are dogs susceptible