Dog Rabies

Because of the many popular misconceptions concerningrabies, it seems advisable to consider a few general facts about thedisease and its spread before taking up the specific symptoms.

Rabies is a virus disease transmissible to almost all kinds of warm-blooded dog.

Not all dogs bitten by a rabid dog develop rabies. Of dogs bitten byrabid dogs, 40 percent die; with horses, the percentage is also 40; hogs,30 percent, and cattle, 30 percent. Only about 15 percent of the hu-mans in one study who took no treatments to protect themselves afterbeing bitten developed the disease. In the past, when rabid wolves bithumans, a higher percentage died.

It is the saliva of the rabid dog that is dangerous. The bite drivesthe virus in the saliva deep into the victim's tissues, where, being aneurotropic virus, it attaches itself to nerves and grows. (If the virus isable to attach itself to a nerve after the dog has been bitten, the doghas rabies. If the dog's body is capable of destroying the virus, the dogdoes not have rabies.) It is not dangerous on the unbroken skin. Whenan dog is bitten, there is no certainty about how long the virus willtake to grow up the nerves until it reaches the huge mass of nerve tissuecalled the brain. The position of the bite has some effect. If a dog isbitten on a back foot, the virus will have quite a distance to travelbefore it reaches the brain; whereas with a bite in the jaw the elapsedtime would be much less. From 15 to 285 days are the extremes foundin a study to determine how long it takes.

What we think of as rabies is merely the manifestation of braininflammation encephalitis and the dog may exhibit any of severaltypical forms of that malady. Thus present-day students of rabies havecome to hold concepts of the disease completely different from those ofour forefathers. Even the old name, hydrophobia, is no longer used.The conceptions of dumb and furious rabies have been dropped be-cause the symptoms these terms describe are only two manifestationsof encephalitis. In rabies, dogs do not have fits and then recover, asthey may with other diseases. Once the symptoms appear, it is a down-hill drag until death ensues.

SYMPTOMS: The earliest sign of rabies may be what seems to be aperverted appetite, but this may be due to hunger coupled with such adimming of the sense of taste that anything will be chewed and swal-lowed. Another sign may be restlessness, excitability, a desire to movewhich becomes accentuated as the virus grows in the brain. Completecharacter reversals are frequent. Some ugly dogs become docile, whilesome lovable, kindly dogs may become ferocious. As the disease progresses, a whole range of symptoms from drowsiness to suchviolent reactions to exciting disturbances that the dog appears wild. A startled look haunts the eyes. Some dogs may be paralyzed and stupidand quiet, giving rise to the idea of "dumb rabies." Other dogs maybecome fearless and run about, head down, biting anything that moves.Since its peripheral nerves are partially or completely paralyzed, thedog Inas little sense of feeling when bitten. In fights with dogs thatrefuse to run, the rabid dog can stand terrific punishment. When con-fined to a cage, it may break its teeth on the bars without apparentpain.

Probably the paralysis of the throat causes panic because the helplessfeeling of not being able to swallow drives the dog wild. Rabid dogsdo not have a phobia, or fear, of water; they simply cannot manage toswallow it, try as they may, and after many attempts to drink naturallythey behave queerly toward it.

In the paralytic form, the lower jaw may hang; it is not held open bymuscle power but rather from want of it. The frothing from the mouthin some cases is well known to all who have heard about mad dogs.Indeed, the common conception of a mad dog is of an dog mimingabout with froth drooling from its mouth. This misconception shouldbe corrected. That type of behavior is far from being the typical formof rabies, and because this fact is not generally recognized, many peo-ple have died.

In all forms of rabies, once the severe encephalitis symptoms appear,death generally ensues in less than a week, sometimes in three days.The dog's bite can be infectious three days before anyone knows it issick. One dog was found to have infected saliva eight days before itshowed the typical symptoms.

Diagnosis beyond the suspicion created by the symptoms is possibleonly by microscopic and biologic means. In order to do this, the sus-pected dog most be destroyed and a portions of the brain examined forinclusion bodies by a test called a fluorescent antibody test.

You wish you have space to tell of the many cases we have seen of theencephalitis following virus diseases and how exactly some followed thecourse of rabies encephalitis. Thousands of dogs that died of other virusdiseases have been suspected of having rabies. We have suspected atleast a dozen to such an extent that we had the brains examined. Onedog bent heavy wire in its cage front, snatched a one-inch-square stickout of someone's hand, chewed and swallowed some of it, ate the metalof a feed pans, ate the equivalent of a newspaper that was on the floor ofits cage, and died with legs in rigid extension. Its brain was sectioned but the tests were negative for rabies. The next step in diagnosis was toinject some of the tissue into mice, and they, too, showed that the dogwas not infected with rabies. If a dog dies in the early stages of rabies,no inclusion bodies have developed, so mouse tests are used as standardprocedure in diagnosis.

PREVENTION AND CONTROL: Suppose you think your dog may berabid. What should you do? Confine it in a veterinary hospital or dogpound. Give it time to develop characteristic symptoms. If it does have rabies, have it destroyed, have the brain examined, and put yourself inthe hands of your veterinarian.

These questions are often asked. Why don't veterinarians try to curedogs affected with rabies? If dogs can't drink, why aren't they given water by vein? Isn't there any serum for rabies? The answer to all thesequestions is that human beings don't want to handle rabid dogs, sopractically nothing has been done in the way of treatment.

Prevention is the keynote in rabies control. It can be made moreeffective by keeping all dogs under supervision and by rigid enforcement of the regulations requiring dog wardens to pick up all strays.Prevention consists of dog vaccination. These are made very inex-pensive in some states by subsidies and veterinary volunteers.

If there is a possibility that infected saliva or other excretion from arabid dog has entered a cut or abrasion, a person can be given treatment, which, if taken in time, causes the human body to developimmunity in the blood, and the immune bodies in turn attack the virusgrowing on the nerves and destroy it.

What chance have you of owning a rabid dog? Since we have setdown in some detail the dangers of this disease to man and his pets,and warned dog owners of the precautions to be taken, a more cheerfulnote may well be struck.

As of this writing the outbreaks of epizootics in raccoons seems themost serious reservoir of the disease but rabid house cats also are in-creasing in numbers. House cats should all be inoculated.