Chris Boese's Weblog

Snopes now confirms Dog Flu = TRUE

In case you needed more confirmation. Some good diagnostic information on the site too. Here's some of it.

UPDATE 9/29/05: For better information than Snopes, see also my other two posts on this subject:

Link: Chris Boese's Weblog: Dog flu: real concern or just Internet hysteria?.

Link: Chris Boese's Weblog: Watch your dog for this scary-contagious dog flu.

Link: Snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Critters (Dog Flu).

Dog Flu

Claim:   A virus deadly to dogs has been spreading in the canine population of the U.S. 
Status:   True.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2005]

The New Canine Influenza, Greyhound Disease, Race Flu, Equine Influenza, Avian Flu

The New Canine Flu, which has killed so many greyhounds is now in the domestic dog population. There is no treatment and no vaccine. It has jumped species, (by feeding greyhounds raw horse meat, which was infected with horse influenza), (horse influenza is avian flu, which jumped species from birds (avian flu), to horses (horse influenza). The avian flu has now moved to racing greyhounds and domestic dogs and the indications are that there may be a potential problem for humans.[Snopes info is disupted, see comments below] It is deadly and it is on the loose. It may just be a matter of time. The CDC is watching the disease.

There is no central tracking agency with report and stat capability for dogs that will get the word out to all vets in the US.

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/05130505/H3N8_Domestic_Dogs_United_States.html

The domestic dog population is at present risk.

This week on my net groups I saw many anecdotal accounts of $100,000 show dogs dying while packed in ice and hooked up to IVs, with high temps. No one knows what is wrong with these dogs and the vets do not know what they are treating. I think it is Greyhound Influenza or Race Flu.

Show populations are now infected and the majority of veterinarians have never heard of the disease. Isolated individuals know this but the country as a whole does not. A few days after exposure at dog shows, dogs are traveling back to their home states and infecting the local populations. Many dogs are dying needlessly. It is not kennel cough.

The period of incubation is 2-5 days. It is airborne, can be transmitted by inanimate objects, and clothing. Virtually all exposed will contract. The morbidity is 80% with 20% being sub clinically affected and shedding the virus. The course of the disease is four weeks. There are two forms, milder and very extreme. Two weeks into the viral disease the dog looks like he is getting over the cough and then bacterial infections become an acute problem. Oft times the owner has reported the dog is well, only to find that a short time later an acute bacterial infection has taken over the dog, in a matter of hours. The owners think the disease has run its course only to learn it hasn't gotten started yet, so dogs are dying needlessly.

My vet thinks earlier rather than later treatment with broad spectrum antibiotics are the best way to treat the disease. With proper vet care perhaps there will only be a mortality of 1-5%.

The information needs to go out so that all vets will know this is not kennel cough, so they will not VAX for kennel cough while ill, and so they can monitor beyond the two week period.

It has been almost impossible for me to understand how in the last four days i have contacted state vets who have never heard of the new influenza, all the while, the people with the info on the disease, refuse to release it nationally.

The AVMA has info that will go out next month. How many will die prior to that? I have begged and cajoled them to do this, so perhaps we are making some headway, however, we need info to go out ASAP.

APHIS says it is not their job.

The people who are handling research on the initial outbreak in FLA., are contacting local, (FLA) BUT not national sources to disseminate information.

Below is a link to a photo album in which i placed the FLA Veterinary Alert and Advisory, which was put out by the FLA VET MED ASSOC., at the request of the State Vet. It is not on the state website.

[...]

Origins:   In 2004, a virulent form of canine influenza surfaced at greyhound racing parks in Florida. In that outbreak, it infected 24 greyhounds and killed 8 more. The contagion has since been confirmed in seven states, having killed greyhounds at tracks in Florida, Massachusetts, Arizona, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas and Iowa. It is highly contagious, with the uninfected picking it up from the infected via shared items or human contact (kennel workers have carried the virus home with them), in addition to dog-to-dog encounters.

The virus that has been felling greyhounds is an H3N8 flu closely related to an equine flu strain. It is not related to typical human flus or to the H5N1 avian flu that has killed about 100 people in Asia.

Dr. Ruben Donis, chief of molecular genetics for the influenza branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirms the flu jumped from horses to dogs, "a very rare event of considerable scientific interest" and adds "at this point, there is no reason to panic." How that jump occurred is either not known at this point or is not being commented on, so the e-mail's assertion that the eating of raw meat was to blame should be regarded as speculation rather than as fact. While there is always the possibility the virus might again jump species, this time to humans, this strain of flu has been present in horses for more than 40 years yet there are no documented cases of humans catching it. There are no known cases of canine flu infecting humans.

A vaccine for the canine flu is under development, a vaccine for the equine version already exists.

[...]

We found this good advice for vets and dog owners in our inbox one day:

PLEASE DO NOT PANIC, and do NOT assume that every cough is Canine Influenza. Kennel Cough from parainfluenza and Bordetella is more common. However, the Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell is interested in receiving samples from dogs that appear to have kennel cough.

Clinical Signs: Since this is a new pathogen in dogs, there is currently no natural immunity present in the unexposed canine population. Almost all exposed dogs will become infected, and nearly 80% have clinical signs. In the mild form the dogs will have a cough that persists for 10 to 21 days. The cough may be soft and moist or dry. Many dogs will have a nasal discharge from a secondary bacterial infection and low grade fever. The nasal discharge responds to broad spectrum antibiotics.

In the severe form with pneumonia there is a high fever (104-106 F) and respiratory difficulties. X-rays may show consolidation. These dogs often have secondary bacterial infections and have responded to broad-spectrum antibiotics and supportive care including intravenous hydration.

The incubation period is two to five days and dogs may shed virus for seven to 10 days. The disease can spread rapidly throughout a boarding kennel. Dogs that are coughing SHOULD NOT BE BROUGHT TO SHOWS or Performance EVENTS.

[...]

Dog flu: real concern or just Internet hysteria?

I don't have any answers on this, but I noticed my post linking to the NYTimes story about it is getting a lot of traffic, and when I searched out on the web, I came across some TV station sites saying it was all just bunkum, rumor and hysteria.

So I decided to check it out as much as I can, online. I mean, it isn't completely unheard of that the New York Times could have been hoodwinked, but I highly doubt it. But just to be on the safe side, I checked snopes.com, the Internet hoax debunker site. If there's a bona fide internet hoax out there, I trust Snopes to be all over it, and there's NOTHING ON SNOPES ABOUT DOG FLU BEING BS.

(Methinks some local TV stations are hard up for some sensational rumor to debunk, and found some uninformed local vets who were willing to sound off on camera.)

I was wondering if the NY Times story is getting dated as the Internet interest has taken off, so just one quick news link turned up this Reuters story from just 18 MINUTES before I made this post, and there were many more, but I grabbed this one just to be up the the minute.

It says the DOG FLU STORIES ARE REAL, but it also tempers some of the initial warnings about how serious it is. I'm not sure what that means, but it is interesting to me that all the experts quoted in these kinds of stories seemed to be focused on it hopping from dogs to people, like that's all we care about, when in actuality, some of us just sit around and worry about our dogs, OK?

I mean, look at how nuts people went over the plight of the poor pets that were forced to be left behind in Katrina, and how people who sit and worry about pets are now affecting evacuation policies for hurricanes like Rita.

(I have an acquaintance from Houston who says the evacuation traffic was way worse than it needed to be because people were hauling carloads of cats with just one or two people in the car, whole caravans of pet brigades or some such. She thought it was getting a bit excessive. Are there really that many people who have that many cats? Maybe I'm naive, but I'd hate to see those litter boxes.)

Anyway, I don't want to contribute to unnecessary hysteria, nor do I want to experience unnecessary hysteria, so here's some bits from the most recent update on the story I can find right now.

Link: New dog flu virus came from horses, experts say - Yahoo! News.

New dog flu virus came from horses, experts say

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent 18 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new dog flu virus that has killed some racing greyhounds made an unusual jump from horses to dogs and may threaten pets but not people, experts said on Monday.

And the virus can also infect dogs without making them sick, meaning it is not as deadly as some reports have suggested, they said.

[...]

There is no evidence that it can infect people, said Dr. Ruben Donis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has published a report on the new virus in the journal Science.

"We must keep in mind that this H3N8 equine influenza virus has been in horses for over 40 years. In all these years we have never been able to document a single case of human infection with this virus," Donis told reporters in a telephone briefing.

"At this point there is no reason to panic," he said, adding that in lab dishes, anyway, the virus could be controlled with antiviral drugs."

Dr. Cynda Crawford of the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine first discovered the virus in greyhounds. It looked deadly at first.

"This virus can cause a respiratory disease that mimics a syndrome that we call kennel cough," Crawford told reporters.

"Kennel cough can be due to a myriad of infectious agents," she added, with a bacterial infection called Bordetella the most common cause.

MILD FORM OF DISEASE

Further checks have found the virus in dogs that were both ill and that seemed entirely healthy in Florida, New York and Massachusetts.

"Despite the rumors that are out on the Internet, this disease is not as deadly as people want to make it. Nearly all dogs are susceptible to infection ... about 80 percent of them will have a mild form of disease, characterized by cough and some nasal discharge that will resolve," she said.

It seems to have a mortality rate of between 5 and 8 percent, she said.

[...]

This was an "an unprecedented interspecies transfer," he said -- and would have implications for understanding the potential of H5N1 to begin infecting people easily.

And dogs could infect people with new viruses, too, the researchers theorized.

"Evidence of canine influenza infection in pet dogs, a primary companion animal for humans, raises the possibility that dogs may provide a new source for transmission of novel influenza A viruses to humans," they wrote in the Science report.

Crawford said pet owners did not need to be unduly concerned yet.

"I am taking my two Pekinese to be groomed next week. I will continue to board my pet greyhounds at boarding kennels when I need to," she said.

She will even let her dogs play at dog parks, but said owners should exercise common sense and keep their pets inside when they have any respiratory disease for two weeks or so, both to allow them to fully recover and to protect other dogs.

Watch your dog for this scary-contagious dog flu

Hopefully a vaccine will be coming soon, but for my part, if my dog gets anything that looks like a little cough or a snotty nose, I'm getting antibiotics, because it sounds so contagious it will spread to more states very quickly. Also, it says in the article that it can look like kennel cough in its early stages. I lost one dog to pnuemonia, but it would just kill me to lose another.

I'd say from the article below that it makes sense to keep your dog away from other dogs, if possible. I'm wondering if cold weather would make it so you don't need to worry about dogs sniffing the spots where other dogs have done their business.

The states it's currently in right now are Florida, Massachusetts, Arizona, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas and Iowa.

Link: A New Deadly, Contagious Dog Flu Virus Is Detected in 7 States - New York Times.

A New Deadly, Contagious Dog Flu Virus Is Detected in 7 States

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. and CARIN RUBENSTEIN Published: September 22, 2005

A new, highly contagious and sometimes deadly canine flu is spreading in kennels and at dog tracks around the country, veterinarians said yesterday.

The virus, which scientists say mutated from an influenza strain that affects horses, has killed racing greyhounds in seven states and has been found in shelters and pet shops in many places, including the New York suburbs, though the extent of its spread is unknown.

Dr. Cynda Crawford, an immunologist at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine who is studying the virus, said that it spread most easily where dogs were housed together but that it could also be passed on the street, in dog runs or even by a human transferring it from one dog to another. Kennel workers have carried the virus home with them, she said.

How many dogs die from the virus is unclear, but scientists said the fatality rate is more than 1 percent and could be as high as 10 percent among puppies and older dogs.

[...]

She added that because dogs had no natural immunity to the virus, virtually every animal exposed would be infected. About 80 percent of dogs that are infected with the virus will develop symptoms, Dr. Crawford said. She added that the symptoms were often mistaken for "kennel cough," a common canine illness that is caused by the bordetella bronchiseptica bacteria.

Both diseases can cause coughing and gagging for up to three weeks, but dogs with canine flu may spike fevers as high as 106 degrees and have runny noses. A few will develop pneumonia, and some of those cases will be fatal. Antibiotics and fluid cut the pneumonia fatality rate, Dr. Crawford said.

[...]

Dr. Donis of the disease control centers said that there was currently no vaccine for the canine flu. But he said one would be relatively easy to develop. The canine flu is less lethal than parvovirus, which typically kills puppies but can be prevented by routine vaccination.

Laboratory tests, Dr. Donis said, have shown that the new flu is susceptible to the two most common antiviral drugs, amantidine and Tamiflu, but those drugs are not licensed for use in dogs.

[...]

About 25 of the dogs were treated by an Ossining [NY] veterinarian, Glenn M. Zeitz, who said two of them had died.

"The dogs came in very sick, with high fevers and very high white blood cell counts," Dr. Zeitz said, making him suspicious that they had something worse than kennel cough.

[...]