Titres… ugh. I spend a lot of time answering questions about titres, with little data to go on.
What are titres?
Titres are a measure of antibody levels in the bloodstream. Antibodies are produced by the body in response to infection or vaccination.
What do titres tell us?
Titres indicate whether a specific antibody is
A busy hockey weekend delayed this topic. I thought this would be a quick one, but there are some interesting and complex issues…and as we move deeper into the vaccination series, there’s even less information on which to base decisions.
This post deals with issues surrounding vaccination at or near the time of surgery. Typically,
The first two parts of this series covered our approaches to vaccination of “healthy” animals. We focus on healthy pets because they comprise the majority of the pet population, and because vaccines are typically labelled for use in healthy pets, e.g. “This product is recommended for the vaccination of healthy dogs…”.
Vaccine labels
I’ll start this off with an introduction to Ozzie, our new-ish pup (he got introduced on Twitter earlier but I haven’t used him for blog material yet). We got him at 7 weeks of age, a day after he was vaccinated, and we need a vaccination plan going forward. It’s ultimately pretty simple, but it’s
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
Since rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus type II (RHDV2) made its first incursion into Canada, and again more recently with the first detection of this virus in Ontario, there’s been a lot of interest in vaccination of rabbits (rabbits and hares are the only species known to be affected). Effective vaccines are available for this
We already have an update on the Michigan dog disease outbreak that I wrote about yesterday which has attracted a lot of attention.
An update (August 24) from the Michigan State Veterinarian indicates this appears to be an outbreak of parvovirus. I’m not overly surprised. As I wrote yesterday:
An outbreak of our typical canine
I
’ve been holding off writing about this, hoping for more details, but my inbox has been flooded with questions about it so I figured I’d get the ball rolling. There’s been a bit of a media frenzy about an apparent outbreak of severe disease in dogs in northern Michigan.
What do we know?
In 2021, the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry (NDMNRF) contacted the University of Guelph’s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses (CPHAZ) about concerns pertaining to the use of the antiviral drug acyclovir in raccoons, specifically for “treatment” of distemper. While only used by a distinct minority of raccoon rehabilitators (maybe
