Regulatory bodies sometimes issue “Dear Veterinarian” (or similar) notices about important issues pertaining to drugs and rug use, like the recent FDA’s letter to veterinarians about extralabel use of fenbendazole in dogs. These notices are used to get important information out to veterinarians, to try to head of future problems.
My topic
Veterinarians sometimes ask me, “Can I give a half dose of a vaccine to small breed dogs?” But more often they say, “An owner wants me to give their small dog a half dose of a vaccine because they are worried about adverse effects. Should I do that?”
The short answer
I’ve written a lot in general about the risks of rabies and other infectious diseases from imported dogs. However, we have to remember that borders are political, not biological, and that rabies (like certain US presidents) doesn’t respect such borders, whether they’re between countries or between provinces.
Whenever we move animals or people, we risk
Most people don’t realize the massive number of dogs that are imported into Canada every year, for all kinds of reasons: from people moving with their own pet, to importation of large shipments of dogs from puppy mills or rescues (the latter ranging from really good operations to really dodgy). Moving animals (or people)
For the longer answer to this question, check out the latest podcast episode I just posted on WormsAndGermsPod. For those who prefer to read the summary, here it is:
If you ask people on the street “should we use the limited antivirals we have available to treat people with flu on dogs and
If I asked 100 random people on the street “should we be giving antibiotics to healthy animals?” I’m pretty sure most or all of them would say “no.“
That makes sense in a lot of ways. We should save antimicrobials to treat sick individuals (especially people), and we shouldn’t use antimicrobials in
The more H5N1 influenza continues to circulate in wild and domestic birds around the world, including here in North America, the more we have to be concerned about exposure of pets to H5N1 influenza through raw food diets. Recent documented infections in cats fed raw meat from infected birds have highlighted these concerns. For
TLDR: Nope.
These days I commonly get the question ”Does vaccination of dogs with available canine influenza vaccines protect them from H5N1 avian flu?” While we don’t have any hard data on this, we still have a pretty good idea of the answer.
One of the challenges with flu vaccination (in any
Recently, the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) designated leptospirosis vaccination to be a “core” vaccination in dogs. That means it’s recommended for all dogs. I’ve had a lot of veterinarians asking questions about this, since traditionally leptospirosis vaccination has been positioned as “optional” based on an individual dog’s risk of exposure.
I’ve considered this
Our latest WormsAndGermsPod episode is a chat with Andy Gibson and Ian Battersby about canine rabies and, in particular, the work of Mission Rabies to help achieve the goal of zero canine-mediated rabies deaths by 2030.
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