The Canine Connection to Ebola

By Amy Fernandez

Purina held its second Better with Pets summit in midtown Manhattan this week. From one point of view, it’s a smart marketing ploy. After all, reinforcing the importance of our pets translates into a bigger customer base. The event’s baseline theme emphasized the interspecies bond.  Purina explored every angle of this phenomenon through a broad cross-section of topics. This year’s eclectic roster reviewed pet-related cultural trends in hip hop and poetry, video art, and social media. These certainly spiced up the day, which primarily focused on typical favorites like the therapeutic role of animals. One of the most interesting presentations reviewed the innovative use of 3D printing to design better pet prosthetics.

As expected, some of these concepts work better than others. But they all confirmed the fact that human and canine lives are irrevocably entwined in obvious and unseen ways. At this point in our shared evolution, untangling our species seems almost impossible

Although it wasn’t among the topics at the Purina Summit, nothing highlights this truth better than the spiraling Ebola crisis. Despite ubiquitous assurances that everything is under control, news reports contradict that on a daily basis.

And it wasn’t long before dogs took center stage in these dismal updates. An international protest followed the announcement that Spanish health authorities intended to euthanize the dog belonging to a nurse stricken with Ebola in Madrid. Within a week, another nurse contracted the virus in Dallas. News coverage immediately zeroed in on her dog.

We hear plenty about Ebola, but in reality, we don’t know that much about it.

It’s believed that the virus originated in fruit bats in the West African rain forest and was subsequently introduced into human populations via contact with infected animals. To date, strains have been detected in several bush animals, including monkeys, pigs, rodents, porcupines, and bats.

There are no documented cases of Ebola transmission between dogs and humans, mainly because no one has bothered to check into that.  Only one study, during a  2001–2002 outbreak in Gabon, investigated the  prevalence of Ebola antibodies in dogs. It confirmed that dogs were infected. However, they exhibited no symptoms and the infection eventually cleared. Researchers concluded that they did not excrete infectious viral particles and were therefore not an intermediary host. But that was a decade ago, and the virus is mutating. Currently, the course of the disease in dogs and their role in transmission is unknown.

In Spain, they decided to play it safe. In Dallas, are taking a more sensible approach to this dilemma. Rather than euthanize the dog, they have quarantined it for observation. Ebola is not going away any time soon, and dogs are going to be part of this picture.

Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=62530

Posted by chesliepickett on Oct 15 2014. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.