Canine/Human rabies in Georgia - Page 1

 See this link:

http://www.thenewsobserver.com/articles/2008/07/25/news/news04.txt

Wow, how strange.. wish they had mentioned the age of the puppies... I always thought young animals wouldn't survive the bite ... guess that ol' spit in your eye thing, maybe??

Hodie, your thoughts??

 Dikah,

Not sure what you are asking. Are you asking how a puppy might be infected, or how the infection was missed? There needs only be exposure to saliva for rabies to be transmitted and the infection can remain latent for months, both in animals and humans. As far as the initial negative tests, if the wrong part of the brain was tested, it would not show up. And as for age of the pups, I do not believe they were older than about 10 weeks.

I just thought a puppy so young would die right away, the infection would happen so fast..  Learned something new and very very scary to me....

The only case of rabies I've ever seen myself was in a young GSD X adopted from a local shelter. He was abut 8 weeks old when he started to show atypical  symptoms and was put down a few weeks later after hiding uder the bed and trying to bite his owners. His symptoms were more typical of distemper, but fortunately we suggested the pup be tested for rabies and low and behold he was positive. His entire family need the post-exposure shots as did my co-workers at the vet clinic. I had not handled him at all so didn't need the shots. After that I was vaccinated against rabies as were all my co-workers.  Here in PA we see very, very few cases of rabies in domestic animals, a few more in wild animals such as skunks. No doubt pets need rabies vacs, but wouldn't it be nice if all states accepted titers instead of insisting on having our dogs vaccinated on a regualr basis? Dream on...............

Blitzen;

www.rabieschallengefund.org

Hopefully this will, some day, lead to the aceptance of titer testing for Rabies.

 An update to the original post:

The District Director of Environmental Health has written:

"All of Georgia laboratory tests were confirmed by the CDC. The 

results indicate the raccoon was negative but the dog was positive 

with raccoon variant rabies virus. The dog in question came from 

Tennessee and may have been exposed there. It is possible a short 

incubation period could place exposure in Georgia."