The lowdown on dog flu

Kim Campbell Thornton • E-mail

All the news of bird flu and the newly emerged canine flu is enough to make us want to lock the doors, close the windows and huddle in bed with our dogs, covers pulled over our heads.

But you and your pooch don't have to hole up at home all winter. Bird flu isn't a current threat to Americans and with some reasonable precautions, it’s still safe for your dog to continue his play dates at the park, stays at the boarding kennel or doggie daycare, and participation in dog sports such as agility, obedience and conformation.

First, some facts about canine flu. The virus, which is highly contagious, was first identified less than a year ago in racing greyhounds in Florida. That does not mean that racing greyhounds spread the virus to the rest of the dog population, says veterinarian Cynda Crawford, assistant scientist at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine, who was one of the researchers who discovered and identified the virus.

“It only appears that way because the focus of my research was to determine what causes kennel cough outbreaks in racing greyhounds,” Crawford says. “Since I focused my efforts on that population of dogs, we stumbled across this flu virus in them just because we were looking at them. If my research had focused on kennel cough outbreaks in shelter dogs, we may have found it in pet dogs in the shelter first.”

To date, nearly 1,000 dogs in 39 states have been screened for canine influenza. Those dogs were tested because they showed signs that made their veterinarians suspect they might have canine flu: a cough, a cough with a runny nose, fever or pneumonia.

Of those dogs, approximately 25 percent have tested positive for canine influenza. That means that the remaining 75 percent were coughing for some other reason, Crawford says. Those other reasons could include canine cough, sometimes known as kennel cough, which is caused by the bordetella bronchiseptica bacteria, or parainfluenza (not the same as canine flu), a mild viral infection of the respiratory tract.

Dogs can be vaccinated for canine cough and parainfluenza, but those vaccinations are not effective against canine flu virus. A vaccine for canine flu is in the works, but veterinary vaccines usually take two to three years to develop, says Crawford.

Most cases are mild
According to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the bad news about canine flu is that because it’s a newly emerging disease, dogs haven’t been exposed to it and thus haven’t developed immunity. The good news is that the majority of dogs that become infected suffer only a mild form of the disease and recover within 10 to 30 days. A mild case of canine flu takes the form of a persistent soft, moist cough, sometimes accompanied by a runny nose.

A minority of dogs develop a more severe form of canine flu that’s characterized by a high fever (104 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit) and pneumonia, which can take hold because the virus damages the lining of the respiratory tract, weakening the respiratory tract’s natural barriers to bacterial infections. They may need intravenous fluids and an antibiotic to help fight off this secondary infection. While most dogs under the care of a veterinarian recover from flu-related pneumonia, about 5 percent do not.

“Unlike people, where we’re worried about the young, the old, and the immunosuppressed, the dogs that have developed pneumonia and even those that have died from pneumonia have been young, healthy dogs in the prime of their life,” Crawford says. “We’ve had 2-month-old puppies die and 9-year-old adults die, but the majority of the dogs are dogs you would not predict would be susceptible to secondary complications.”

Now that certainly sounds scary, but if you turn it around, you realize that 95 percent of the dogs that develop canine flu survive and most suffer only minor symptoms.

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