A recent commentary in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics by Moore et al. entitled “A doggy tale: Risk of zoonotic infection with Bordetella bronchiseptica for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients from live licenced bacterial veterinary vaccines for cats and dogs” discusses concerns about using the most common “kennel cough” vaccines in animals
Canine Pneumovirus in an Animal Shelter
We’ve come a long way in terms of medical diagnostic technology in recent years. It’s now cheap and easy to identify a wide range of viruses and bacteria, including some we’ve never seen before. However, our ability to find pathogens has outpaced our ability to understand the role they may (or may not) play in
Canine Flu and a Bit of Geopolitics?
Since we’re still seeing more respiratory disease in dogs pretty widely across North America (see previous blog posts on this topic for more info), I get asked about canine influenza a lot. My general responses are:
- Canada: As far as we know, we don’t have canine influenza in Canada. It was introduced
Canine Influenza: California
After a couple of years of very little apparent canine influenza activity in the US, the virus seems to have come back with a vengeance in some parts of California. Canine H3N2 influenza came to North America from Asia in approximately 2015 and caused outbreaks in many areas, but then seemed to slip into
Respiratory Disease Outbreaks In Dogs
For the past year or more, we’ve been trying to track infectious upper respiratory tract disease (officially known as “canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC)” but more commonly called “kennel cough”). It’s a tough thing to do since testing is limited, the disease is always present to some degree in the dog population, and there’s
Bordetella bronchiseptica (Kennel Cough) Vaccination in Dogs: Human Health Risk?
A recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics entitled “A doggy tale: Risk of zoonotic infection with Bordetella bronchiseptica for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients from live licensed bacterial veterinary vaccines for dogs and cats” (Moore et al. 2021) discusses (as the title suggests) human health risks from commonly-used
Canine Influenza in the News: US
Canine influenza is back in the news in the US, with close to 50 dogs infected with canine influenza at a dog rescue in Florida. The outbreak has been going on for over two weeks already. This is a “surprising but not surprising” scenario to me.
It’s a bit surprising because canine flu activity
Update: Canine Respiratory Disease, Ontario (June 21)
As I mentioned recently, we’re tracking anecdotal reports of increased respiratory disease activity in dogs in Ontario. If you have observations or cases to contribute/report, please take a few minutes to fill out our short survey here:
https://uoguelph.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eP6E6AzIiJfnDlY
Infectious respiratory disease is endemic in dogs everywhere, so there’s always some disease activity going on. Sometimes
Canine Respiratory Disease Issues, Ontario?
I get calls about concerns regarding increased respiratory disease in dogs all the time.
- Sometimes, they’re the result of local disease outbreaks.
- Sometimes, they’re just a result of increased awareness of the normal “baseline” disease rate, since “kennel cough” is always occurring at some level.
- Sometimes, the circumstances just seem different, and we need to
Severe Canine Respiratory Disease: Ontario
I’ve recently received a few reports of serious (including fatal) respiratory disease in dogs in regions east of Toronto, Ontario. We often see localized variations in the incidence of “kennel cough” (aka canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC)), including sporadic outbreaks, but in this case there is particular concern about the number of severe infections