In case anyone would like a break from all the canine infectious respiratory disease (CIRDC) posts, take a moment to gawk in disbelief (as I did initially) at this human-created debacle:
Skunk purchased from Michigan breeder tests positive for rabies.
How many things are wrong with this, just based on the headline? Ugh.
For
Vaccine hesitancy by pet owners has been in the news a lot recently, largely due to a recent study about the prevalence and consequences of vaccine hesitancy among dog owners in the US (Motta et al. 2023). The survey-based study reported 37% of respondents think vaccines can cause “cognitive issues, like canine/feline autism”
(TL:DR… check out the TikTok version at the bottom)
When I was a newly graduated veterinarian in general practice, I gave puppies and kittens their first rabies vaccine at 16 weeks of age. That was the standard at the clinic and a common practice elsewhere. Now, if I ask audiences of veterinarians when they vaccinated
There’s nothing too earth-shattering here, but a few useful changes pertaining to rabies regulations are coming to Ontario as of July 1, 2023.
While I get lots of interesting infectious disease questions every day, most aren’t new.
This one was.
To paraphrase, the question was basically “If we want to minimize the number of injections when vaccinating a dog, can we mix rabies and core (e.g. distemper, parvovirus, adenovirus) vaccines in the same syringe, using rabies vaccine
As per usual, the annual US rabies state-of-the-union has been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Ma et al. 2023). It’s the same general information every year, but always a good reminder of the ongoing challenges with rabies here in North America.
Here are some highlights from the animal-related
Canada has a long-standing requirement for rabies vaccination of most categories of dogs and cats being imported from countries not considered free of non-bat rabies. While this requirement helps protect dogs and cats from rabies infection should they be exposed to endemic wildlife rabies that is present in Canada, it does little to prevent rabies
We have different approaches to rabies in dogs and cats versus humans. The ultimate goal is still the same: preventing this almost invariably fatal infection. However, between humans and animals there are differences in who we target for vaccination, frequency of vaccination, utility of rabies antibody titres, and how we respond to potential rabies exposures,
For some reason, I’ve been spending a lot more time lately discussing vaccination, so I figured I’d write about a series of vaccine issues, questions and dogmas (that are often non-evidence-based or just downright wrong).
Age for first rabies vaccine
Here in Canada at least, rabies vaccines are licensed for use in dogs and cats
As the weather cools down and wildlife of various kinds become less active (as do many pets and people!), we tend to see a decline in the number of rabies cases detected in the province. It doesn’t mean the risk is no longer there, it just means we’re less likely to encounter the animals that
