HEALTH WARNING FOR PUPPIES

[Lady B]

This came to me last night from an individual involved in rescue. It warrants further publicity as the end result is so deadly for pups.

"MAJOR CANINE HEALTH ALERT

Some of you may have experience or are just experiencing a flu like bug that is rapidly moving across the Pacific NorthWest area. The symptoms are vomiting, slightly elevated fever for 48-72 hours and a lack of appetite for about a week.

This virus is highly contagious and spreads through kennels like wildfire.

While seemingly innocuous to young adults and older - this virus is now killing young baby puppies. While I do not wish to mention the kennel - almost half of a litter was lost yesterday. One of the kennels dogs came up from California with the flu - gave it to the other kennel dogs - they had absolutely no contact with mom and the puppies - the virus was transmitted on the bottoms of shoes, momma dog got it and 3 out of 8 puppies were lost this week.

Autopsy said that the virus caused massive e coli infection in the puppy body cavities.

Our vet recommends that absolutely no contact be made to new puppies at this time, use bleach or Parvosol on shoes and anything that will cause an outside contact to the puppies. We are attempting to obtain stool samples to isolate this virus so that some defense can be mounted to it.

Please be very very very careful for your puppies - this one is a very bad one and again - spreads like the flu."

[SarasMom]

Lady B,
Is it only affecting pre-weaned pups, or is it also in puppies 7 or 8 weeks and up?

[Lady B]

As promised more information:

"So far we have seen this thing attack all ages without discrimination. The very old and extremely young are most vulnerable. One of the contacts has a virulogist for a father - said this thing (supposedly) can only live for four hour outside of a host - that is not at all confirmed - and suspect due to the way that it passed at the albany show. There also are several unconfirmed linkages between people and the dogs - this passing back and
forth. The canadian board of health is looking closely at this one. The virulogist said that a full strength bleach wash is about the only thing that has possibilities of containing this. The real problem is that once it starts, it flashes through a kennel.
We got it with the inside dogs and then
the outside kennel got it 3 days later. Absolutely no contact between them accept from my shoes.

We just brought a 12 week old onto the property and three other dogs that have yet to be exposed. The virus cleared on Friday - so we are anxious to see if the new dogs pick this up. Other breeders have also seen this, had someone email that they lost 8 puppies to this thing this year. Please be very very very careful - hard to control this one."

[SarasMom]

Thanks, LadyB.
I'll ask my vets if they have seen any of it around here. One of my neighbor's dogs had something like this a couple months ago, but it could have been something else too.