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
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?
A GoFundMe campaign is underway to pay the vet bills for a sick dog that was imported from Ecuador. The whole story can be found on the site but the quick version is as follows:
Someone from the Ottawa area was in Quito and saw a street puppy she liked. On her last day in
Here’s a question that I get commonly: “What do I do to an outdoor area that might have been contaminated by a dog with parvovirus?”
There’s not a lot of research to back anything up, but understanding the virus and some basic principles helps us come up with some reasonable recommendations.
Parvovirus is…
For the third time in the past year, Macon-Bill Animal Welfare in Georgia (USA) has a problem with canine parvovirus. The shelter is closed for two weeks in response to a puppy testing positive for this highly contagious virus that can cause serious disease in dogs (almost exclusively in unvaccinated puppies). At first glance
In Canada (like most places), there’s no semblance of a formal surveillance program for infectious diseases of companion animals. We’re left with anecdotes and whatever short-term research projects we can put together to try to figure out what’s happening in our companion animal populations. Not ideal, but better than nothing.
Over the past month or
An interesting and frankly somewhat scary report in an upcoming issue of Veterinary Microbiology (Clegg et al 2012) provides further information suggesting that cats might be a source of canine parvovirus infection. This potentially fatal infection, which typically affects young unvaccinated (or inadequately vaccinated) puppies, is a major problem, and outbreaks occur (not
A parvovirus outbreak has been identified at the Occupy San Francisco camp, with at least three dogs affected by the highly contagious and potentially very serious viral disease. The San Francisco SPCA has visited the camp and their temporary clinic was attended by "dozens" of dog owners (indicating lots of dogs at the camp).
Disinfectants aren’t very important for your average pet owner. They are more of an issue for kennels and veterinary hospitals, but there are situations where disinfection of an area contaminated by a pet might be needed.This is particularly true for certain microorganisms that can persist in the environment for a long time. The "poster bug"
