<<<<<< Pseudo Rabies Alert >>>>>>

[Ladogos]

    I had a very heart breaking phone call from a friend of mine that has two of my dogo pups .  Well 11 months old that is.   He is one of those kind of owners that everyone wants to have there dogs.   He takes care of them top of the line everything. They sleep in the bed with his kids, go to the farm with them, and has been using them to hunt pigs. They are a Uniqo X Daisy cross and have been doing very well.   
   Well I got a phone call from him friday night and he said he had some sad news .  He said that they had been hunting a few days before and the next day after they got home he noticed one of the pups , Azul, was scratching at his eye very profusely .  They checked him over and could not find anything wrong and thought he must have gotten stung by some sort of an insect or spider. They let Azul sleep in the bed with his son and he tried to keep him from scratching during the night. Well when morning came Azul couldn't get up. This was Saturday morning and they rushed him to the vet. Azul had a fever of 106 . The vet worked with him for a couple of hours and could not save him. . .   Man i was sad .   Well when they got home Satueday evening they noticed The other dog , Uniqo 2, was starting to scratch. He called me and told me they were on there way back to the vet.  I then told him to have his vet to test for Pseudo Rabies.  So they turned around and immediately rushed him to the vet. The vet drew blood and ran test in lab but no definate signs of anything other than an infection. And the vet didnt have a way for testing for Pseudo Rabies in lab.  She then drew more blood and Fed-Xed it to Texas A&M University vet and science department for analysis .   The vet sounded hopefull that he would make it as they thought they caught it in time.  Saturday night thinking they may have caught it in time .  He got a phone call at 5 am telling him that Uniqo 2 started haveing cunvulsions and seizures and didn't make it .  Well after he got home he called his hunting partner to tell him the news and his hunting partner told him that his Pit Bull that was in on the catch also died that morning.
The vet said it showed all signs and symptoms of the Pseudo Rabies but cant be confirmed untill they hear back from Texas A&M University.
   Man this family is torn apart they were really close to these two dog as they went everywhere and done everything with them.

This is one of those very rare occurances that you hear about but it never happens to you.   Well after a Lot of research on the net it does happen and seems to be carried in a lot of wild pigs. More than i thought .    A BIG THANKS TO ALL THE PHONE CALLS AND HELP OFFERING For this family .  Yall are TRUELY my friends. 

Below is a good write up on this deadly desease .  It is Always FATAL in dogs from what I understand . .   

Forgot to Meantion the hog was caught from the Kerrville , Junction Area in South Texas .

http://www.upprs.com/health/pseudorabies.htm

[Mike]

Man, I hate to hear that Marvin. That's a bad deal we all face everytime we cut the dogs loose... hear about a few cases every year.

[Monteria]

73% of the hogs we have tested were Pseudorabies positive. Intra-species transmission of the disease is difficult but when you find that one hog with an easily transmittable strain, it can wreak havoc on your pack. There is no cure for it.

Sorry about the misfortune.

Steve

[Ladogos]

  Steve is there, or do you know of, any kind of vaccine that can be given ahead of time for this ?  If so what is the success rate ? 
Any information will be greatly appreciated .

[ppc dogos]

Damm.. Scary stuff.

[bob]

when the dogs get pseudo rabies do they always scratch a lot ?

[Ladogos]

  Bob,  I havent ever experianced it myself so i am not sure. It is pretty rare .  BUT from what my friend told me both of his dogs started scratching profusively and also his hunting partners bulldog was scratching a lot.  Almost frantictly from what i understand.  Also the write up on it says they will most of the time scratch franticly .

[Monteria]

There is no vaccine and there is no cure.

Its nasty stuff. A dog will not live more than 4 days after the first symptoms show. Mild swelling and irritation of the eyes and face is normally the first symptom which will eventually increase in severity until it causes the dog to literally scratch its face off. Luckily, in most cases, the animal does not live that long but it is an excruciatingly painful death none the less.

Lucky for us and our dogs, its not normally easy for them to get.

Steve

[crackerc]

Hate to hear about the loss of the dogs to Pseudo Rabies. I had a scary experience with it several years ago.

A buddy had brought his kids and come to the ranch and hunted with me a few times. Well, you know what that leads to, he then wanted his own dog. I didn't have any pups or young dogs, so he got a pup from someone else. Raised the pup up to about 4-5 months, kids loved the dog, everything was going great.

They wanted to show him a hog, so I caught a boar shoat with Dixie one Friday afternoon while out checking cows and put it in the dogbox. This guy brought his pup out Sat morning, we hobbled two of the shoats legs and turned him loose with the pup watching. He hobbled around and went off in a patch of high grass. We turned the pup loose and he ran over to where he last saw the hog and smelled all over. We finally walked him into the grass and the hog tried to run at the pup, but fell over. The pup went nuts, bayed, trying to bite the shoat, ect.

Pup acted good, wasn't scared and showed lots of interest. The shoat had a lot of fight but was having trouble standing and fighting due to being tied.

We untied the shoat, let him loose, then turned the pup loose. The pup ran in , the shoat came to him and they had a little go around. The shoat broke and got away from the pup. I had Dixie in the truck and didn't want a BOAR shoat turned lose as I cut every one I get my hands on, so I turned Dixie loose. She caught him within 100-150 yards and the pup followed us in and caught the shoat with Dixie.

We cut the pig and turned it loose, we were done for the day. Monday I got a phone call that their pup is scratching and digging sores in himself. I tell them to get him to a vet quick.
The vet sedated him to keep him from hurting himself, pulled blood for tests (I had told them to have him check for Psuedo) and hoped for the best. By Wednesday the pup was dead, tests came back positive for Psuedo and I was looking at Dixie with a heavy heart. That was the ONLY pig the pup had ever seen in his life and I caught the pig with Dixie on Friday, then again on Saturday.

Luckily Dixie never got it. I asked my vet (who is very smart and holds the highest grade of any vet graduate at UF) about it. He felt that somewhere in her life Dixie must have been exposed and her body had built up some immunity to the disease. The pup, being young, had no such immunity.

There is no cure and when I asked about a vaccine , he told me there wasn't one because there was no MONEY in it. He told me the vaccine companies had done some research on a Psuedo vaccine, but felt that such a small percentage of dogs were exposed to wild hogs and of those, only a percentage of owners would buy the vaccines, that they couldn't justify spending the money to develop the vaccine............

So there could be a vaccine........we are just such a minority the vaccine companies won't make a vaccine to save our dogs. Makes you wonder if they are in it for the animals well being or just the money doesn't it??

[ppc dogos]

So there could be a vaccine........we are just such a minority the vaccine companies won't make a vaccine to save our dogs. Makes you wonder if they are in it for the animals well being or just the money doesn't it??

Yes, sadly.

[jhy]

My buddies lost most of the entire yards up here in North La.-South Ark. to pseudorabies about 10 years ago.  Havent heard much of it since, but I am very sorry to hear that.  I am sure they were excellent dogs.

Joey