I’m on my way back from Copenhagen where we had a very productive meeting to update the ISCAID pyelonephritis antimicrobial treatment guidelines for dogs and cats. As the process for developing guidelines like these has matured, it’s no longer about simply getting some very smart people in a room and agreeing on recommendations; it’s now
Canada recently lost its measles-free status, in large part because of a slip in our overall vaccination rate. A lot of that has been driven by vaccine hesitancy. The resurgence of measles in people shows what can happen when we aren’t using one of our best control methods (vaccination) optimally.
Vaccine hesitancy is an issue
When I was in general practice, we gave puppies and kittens their first rabies vaccine at 16 weeks of age. I didn’t ask why, it’s just what the clinic did, so as a new grad, that’s what I did. This practice is (unfortunately) still common in a lot of clinics; however, all rabies vaccines approved
Cat colonies present some interesting infectious disease challenges. Anytime we have animals congregating, there’s an increased risk of disease transmission, and when they’re outside, it also increases the risk of diseases from wildlife. Thus cat colonies can become a bridge for diseases between wildlife and people.
I’ll pause here to add a perspective that I’d
I suspect that people in every decade since the 1940s have said “we really shouldn’t have to talk about why raw milk is bad anymore, should we?” …but apparently we do still have to talk about it, and with certain high-profile characters in the US pushing raw milk, the topic isn’t going away anytime soon.
Lately, there have been quite a few news reports about canine parvovirus in London, Ontario. Overall the report have been pretty balanced, highlighting the fact that parvo is causing problems but not overplaying the issue (which happens all too often). Some reports have said there’s an “outbreak” of parvo in an area.
Sometimes a
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)
