In situations like the ongoing concern with canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC) in the US, where we don’t have any semblance of a surveillance program, we can sometimes try to piece together the picture using different data sets and observations; insurance claims can be a valuable part of this. At our webinar on
Canine Respiratory Disease Outbreak: Advice For Groomers
There’s a lot of concern about respiratory disease in dogs at the moment, so it’s a opportunity time to revisit some routine preventive measures that we really should be using all the time (but unfortunately sometimes fall by the wayside). This post focuses on precautions for dog groomers, but really it applies to a
Canine Respiratory Illness Q&A: Free Webinar (November 30)
Dr. Mike Lappin and I are teaming up with Dr. Carrie Jurney (President of Not One More Vet) and Dr. Steve Weinrauch (Chief Veterinary/Product Officer of Trupanion, founder of MightyVet) for a webinar about canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC) issues in the US (plus some Canadian content). There may be a
A Dog Owner’s Guide to Navigating Respiratory Disease Concerns
There’s been a lot of discussion about canine infectious respiratory disease complex (CIRDC) going around in dogs in the US recently. In the last week, I’ve already covered this from a few different angles, including what might really be going on with all the reports of sick dogs, reports of the potential involvement of
New Weird Canine Respiratory Pathogen? What Do We Know?
As concerns about an outbreak of canine infectious respiratory disease in the US continue, we’re still at a point where media hype massively outweighs any true data. Not much new has been reported recently. If anything, I’d say we’re hearing more about things being stable in different areas, that investigations haven’t turned up anything beyond
Mystery Dog Respiratory Disease (Or Not) and Antibiotics (Or Not)
As concerns about canine infectious respiratory disease in the US have taken up most of my time lately, let’s merge that issue with what I had hoped to be the focus of the week: World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week.
Despite lots of media attention and associated fear, we’re still not sure what’s going
Update: FIP Outbreak in Cyprus
Back in August, I wrote about a high-profile but poorly described “outbreak” of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) in cats in Cyprus. Now, a preprint publication (Attipa et al. 2023) has come out with some interesting information, but lots of questions still remain. That’s the nature of emerging diseases – a single report
Update: Canine influenza in Alberta (October 26)
After a recent case of H3N2 influenza was detected in a dog in Calgary (that presumably originated in the US), there’s not much to update, which is hopefully good news. Things have been quiet. On one hand, that’s a bit surprising, because flu is highly transmissible and there’s basically no pre-existing immunity in the Canadian
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
Human Multidrug-Resistant Salmonella Linked to Raw Pet Diets
Avian flu caused an uptick in discussion about health risks associated with feeding dogs and cats raw meat, based on the possible (and still pretty tenuous) link between raw poultry and a large number of H5N1 infections in cats in Poland.
The link between raw diets and flu infections is new, and something