An Unusual Opportunity

The Farm Side is usually behind the paper's pay wall, so if you want to read it you have to.....well.....pay....

Last week it was shared on Facebook for free, so I guess it will be okay if I share a link so you who do not get the Recorder can read it as well.

So, without further ado, here it is: Watch out for Rabies

Well butter my taters. between the time I wrote this and like ten minutes later, the pay wall was back. OK, let's try it this way. (Not that the paper isn't worth paying for or anything.)

Beware

Two Upstate NY pet dogs recently came into contact with rabid animals.
One encountered a diseased raccoon in the Herkimer area and the other a skunk
in Vernon.

I haven’t heard what happened with the former dog,
but the second one is looking at six months of quarantine
because his rabies vaccination was out of date.

Pretty much any dog that tangles with a skunk comes out on the losing end,
but this poor guy got it even worse than most.

The very same day a strong odor of skunk wafted over from the cow barn
when I was out with Finnbar, our latest Border Collie.
Fortunately he was on a leash and is up to date on his shots.

Skunks are going to be much in evidence for the next little while.
Tis the season of love for the stripey little stinkers
and they like fragrant perfume as much as the next romeo.

Rabies seems to rear its ugly head around here every year or so,
with wild animals acting as a reservoir for the disease and spreading it to pets
and livestock. It is not unusual to hear of cases in feral barn cats and even rabbits
and woodchucks have tested positive.

However, in 2017, the most recent year I could find reported, according to
New York Upstate.com, Montgomery County was fortunate
to have no diagnosed cases, although 13 animals were tested.

Oddly enough, perhaps because there are so many potential animal/human encounters
there, Westchester County had the largest number of problems with 414 animals
tested and 18 positives.

However, endemic rabies is not the only potential source for this almost-always
deadly scourge. Rabies is much more prevalent in many other countries
than it is here and the disease is sometimes inadvertently imported as well.
In fact tragically, a US soldier who was bitten by a feral dog in Afghanistan
in 2011 died of rabies upon his return home.

He had come in contact with many other people before the disease was diagnosed,
with at least 22 of them needing preventative treatment.

Thus it was with interest that I read of 200 dogs being rescued
to the US from dog meat farms in Seoul, S. Korea, by way of Toronto, Canada.
Although the practice of eating dogs is on the decline in Asia,
there are still some practitioners of this ugsome habit there.
However, it is said that even the South Korean President Moon Jae-in
adopted a shelter dog in ‘17.

The International Humane Society has claimed to be offering the former dog farmer
a computer science course that will enable him to seek alternative employment.

Don’t you wonder though, what vaccinations the imported dogs received
and what precautions were taken to protect the kind people who foster them
and the animals they encounter?

According to US Customs and Border Protection, “The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) requires that pet dogs be vaccinated against rabies
and be healthy upon arrival.  Dogs that have never been vaccinated against rabies
must be vaccinated at least 30 days before entering the United States.

Puppies must not be vaccinated against rabies before 3 months of age,
so the youngest that a puppy can be imported into the United States is
4 months of age.”

You might assume that all the dogs brought here for rescue complied
with these regulations.

However, that is not always the case. The CDC reports that the US has eliminated
canine variant rabies, which is a pretty big deal.
It means that even though dogs may transmit rabies to people,
probably due to the way we live in close proximity to them,
a dog will not get rabies from another dog.

Instead wild animals, such as the skunk and raccoon mentioned above,
transmit the disease to unvaccinated dogs.

Which brings us to some other overseas rescue dogs brought here over the past
few years.
In one case a Chihuahua rescued from the streets of Egypt probably had
falsified rabies vaccination papers and tested positive for rabies virus.

Before this happened the dog, known to the CDC as “dog A” bit several people
and then died.
It exhibited classic symptoms of the disease, irritability, aggressiveness, confusion,
and aversion to water.

Thus began an extensive investigation into how the dog got here and with
whom it had come in contact.
Turns out quite a few people were involved before it reached its final destination in
Connecticut.

From Egypt to JFK Airport to states all over the Eastern Seaboard,
people and animals were potentially exposed to this nearly always deadly disease.

The Egyptian dog was neither the only, nor even the first dog to be imported
with the disease. Infected dogs from India and Iraq were also brought here,
bringing the total number of rabid dogs imported into the US in the past 15 years to 6.
Each such importation brings with it the potential to reestablish canine
variant rabies in our own dog population, as well as to actually kill people and animals.

The CDC said, “Elimination of the canine rabies virus variant from the United States
required approximately 5 decades and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Imported cases present an ongoing opportunity for reestablishment of the variant
and require lengthy and costly investigations to prevent additional cases in
both humans and animals.”

Seems we should be cautious with animals that come here from other countries,
making sure that not only is their paperwork in order,
but that they are carefully observed before going into people’s homes,
and tracked afterward.

That being said, I have owned dogs with imported parents.
Those original two Border Collies, Mike and Gael, were the first generation of pups
born in the US from parents imported from Scotland, with ancestors in
England and Wales as well. I swear, even though he was whelped in Altamont,
Mike barked with a Scottish burr sometimes.

Anyhow, whether you are adopting, buying, or just enjoying your family pet,
rabies is something to be watch out for.

Writing the column is how I spend several mornings each week, as I have for 21 years now. I just sent this week's missive a few minutes ago.

Here are some links to this week's research.

EPA new WOTUS regs

How to report slaves in Washington State

More on that

Human rights for a lake

Lawsuit on the latter

I usually use many more stories than these but they are frequently repetitive so....