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)
- 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
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
Respiratory Disease in Dogs Sweeping Across the US: Outbreak of Disease or Media Attention?
I’ve held off writing about this but since I’ve been answering many emails about it every day, here we go.
The questions I keep getting (as usual) are “What’s going on with this reported outbreak of respiratory disease in dogs in the US? What new disease is this?”
I’m not sure there’s a
More on Canine Vaccine Adverse Events
A large and eagerly-awaited follow up study on adverse post-vaccination events in dogs was recently published recently, and it provides a lot of solid – but unsurprising – data.
The study (Moore et al. 2023), published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association and led by Dr. George Moore from Purdue
Parvovirus in vaccinated dogs? Northern Ontario
We’re getting reports of potential canine parvovirus infection in vaccinated dogs in some parts of northern Ontario. Parvo is a nasty but vaccine-preventable disease, and available vaccines are very effective. True vaccine breakthrough (i.e. infection in a fully vaccinated individual) seems to be rare with canine parvo, but no vaccine is 100% effective, so it
Vaccine Hesitancy in Pets: A Look At Adverse Event Rates
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”
At What Age Should We Vaccinate Puppies and Kittens Against Rabies?
(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
Changes to Ontario Rabies Rules
- Medical officers of health (MOHs) will have the ability to require rabies testing of animals that have died or are euthanized during their 10 day observation period after they’ve bitten someone.
Mixing Vaccines in Dogs
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