When we talk about “worms” in dogs or cats, we’re usually talking about parasites that can infect pets or (less commonly) that harbour other pathogens. However, there are also certain worms that can cause other problems for our furry friends. For example, the hammerhead flatworm (Bipalium adventitium) produces a very potent paralytic neurotoxin
Your Dog’s Social Network: A Research Study
Infectious diseases of dogs continue to be in the news, and that’s not going to stop. Anytime we have dogs mixing, we have some risk of disease transmission. I wrote about your dog’s social network and why it matters in a previous post.
We are now trying to gather some real data about typical dog
New WHO Medically Important Antimicrobial List
Hot off the press (at long last), here is the latest version of the World Health Organization’s Medically Important Antimicrobial List.
What is the WHO Medically Important Antimicrobial List?
It’s a document that categorizes all the classes of antimicrobials that are used in people and/or animals by how important they are to human medicine
“Lifestyle Vaccines” in Dogs: Expanding Our Thoughts
When we talk about vaccines of dogs*, we tend to split them into “core” and “non-core” vaccines.
(*The same applies to cats. I use dogs by default for posts like this, which sometimes gets me an earful, but I’m not actually ignoring cats.)
Core vaccines are those that every animal should
Modified Live Kennel Cough (Bordetella) Vaccines in Dogs: What is the Human Risk?
As awareness of canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC, formerly known as “kennel cough”) has spiked recently, there are more discussions happening about respiratory vaccines in dogs. A large number of different bacteria and viruses play a role in CIRDC. We can vaccinate against a few of them including parainfluenza virus (the most commonly
Update: Canine Infectious Respiratory Disease (January 10)
This may be my last update on this topic in the short term (unless things change, of course).
The good news:
- Cases of canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC) around most of the US and Canada seem to be waning, if not back to normal. Since we have no formal surveillance, we have to rely
Your Dog’s Social Network: Why It Matters
No, I’m not talking about a need for Facebook for Dogs. I’m talking about the interaction and contact networks that dogs have, which are important for understanding and mitigating infectious disease risks. Let’s use my dogs as an example.
Dog 1: Ozzie
Antimicrobials Used For Growth Promotion: WOAH Call For Countries to Do What They Said They’d Do
The World Organization for Animal Health Health (WOAH, formerly the OIE) has issues a call to countries to live up to their commitments to phase out the use of antimicrobials for growth promotion in animals. This is low-hanging fruit in terms of antimicrobial stewardship that you’d think would have been addressed by now, but
US Antimicrobial Sales For Use in Animals, 2022
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s 2022 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food Producing Animals has been released. It includes some good signs and some bad signs in terms of curbing antimicrobial use (AMU) in the US, but it’s clear we still have a lot of room to improve.
What Were They Thinking? Purchased Skunk With Rabies
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