I’ve written a lot lately about importation of pets and associated infectious disease issues. A recent paper in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health (Sinclair et al, Dogs entering the United States from rabies-endemic countries, 2011-2012) provides some interesting data on this topic.
Dogs entering the US from countries where rabies is present
The cats were mainly indoor cats owned by one person – a pretty classical case of cat hoarding. All were in very poor condition. There were vaccination records for 15 of them, but there was no way to
It’s that time of year. No, not for snow (although it is snowing here at the moment). It’s time for the annual US rabies surveillance report in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Dyer et al. Rabies surveillance in the United States during 2013).
The highlights…
A Brockton, MA dog was euthanized after being bitten by a rabid skunk, because of a combination of the skunk’s rabies diagnosis, a relatively minor lapse in the dog’s vaccinations, and regulatory inflexibility. The ten-year-old Schnauzer cross was bitten in its own yard, and the skunk was subsequently caught, tested and diagnosed as rabid.
Oh, where to start…
I’ll admit it – I don’t understand dogs. How is it that they have this incredibly well-developed sense of smell, but my dog feels it necessary to roll in the most disgusting smelling things he can find? I guess it’s not that he feels like he needs strong body odour, just that he has a
A reader recently posed a question about the potential risk of rabies virus exposure from running over a rabid animal. I get the "can I get rabies from touching roadkill?" question regularly, but this person had a different concern.
“The other day I accidentally plowed right over an already-dead animal in the
A recent report about a rabid raccoon in New Brunswick highlights a few different issues regarding rabies exposure, and the marked differences in application and interpretation of various guidelines.
The incident occurred in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, where a family came home "to find their 2 dogs excitedly circling around something in the yard.
Rabies is a very serious disease. We’re very lucky in Canada that in most parts of the country the prevalence of this disease is now quite low, in large part due to wildlife control and vaccination efforts. Unfortunately that also seems to make some people quite lax when it comes to (common sense) things like
Following the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (rather mind-boggling) abandonment of the rabies response portfolio, there’s been a scramble by provinces to figure out what to do. The CFIA will still perform testing, but will not have any role in sample collection, sample shipping or investigation. I’m not sure what most provinces are doing (and based
