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Is Dog Flu Still Rampant and Is it Spreading to Cats?

By Josh McGhee | April 17, 2015 8:31am
 Dante, a Pomeranian/Chihuahua/German shepherd mix, died Sunday morning, his owner said.
Dante, a Pomeranian/Chihuahua/German shepherd mix, died Sunday morning, his owner said.
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Courtesy of Don Calloway

CHICAGO — Don Calloway's pooch, Dante, seemed like his normal playful self when Calloway left his Bucktown home for work one morning last week, but hours later the 12-year-old dog was a lethargic shell of his playful self, unwilling to even play outside.

"He usually runs down the hallway super excited, but he was just kind of standing there. Right away I sensed that something was just not right," Calloway said, remembering how he stood at his door with the leash waiting for Pomeranian/Chihuahua/German shepherd mix.

Calloway rushed his dog to emergency care, where he was told by vets that he had "a very sick dog" and was battling a virus that left him with a low white blood cell count. Dante spent the next two days suffering until getting pneumonia and going into cardiac arrest, Calloway said.

Around 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the vet informed Calloway that Dante had died. While the doctor admitted the symptoms were consistent with the dog flu, which has rendered dog parks barren and temporarily closed dog hospitals, they could not confirm Dante had contracted the disease.

Earlier in April, the Cook County Department of Animals and Rabies Control warned of an increase in the cases of canine infectious respiratory disease that could last for several weeks before subsiding. Voluntary surveys by veterinarians confirmed more than 1,000 cases, but only five fatalities.

Donna Alexander, an administrator with department, said the most severe forms of the disease are being seen in dogs younger than 1 and older than 7.

But earlier this week, scientists at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin determined the virus was more dangerous than assumed and was actually a different strain of influenza than believed. They determined the virus was "H3N2," which is typically found in southern Chinese and South Korean dogs. Though it has been in Asia since 2006, this is the first detection of it in North America the report said.

While both strains of the Asian dog flu can cause high fever, loss of appetite, coughing, nasal discharge and lethargy in dogs, H3N2 has also been known to cause respiratory illness and infection in cats. With H3N2 symptoms may be more severe and some dogs may not show any symptoms, the report said.

Owners of dogs and cats experiencing similar symptoms should consult their vet.

According to Maria Manrique, a veterinarian at the South Loop Animal Hospital, cases of the dog flu have been less consistent in the city, but appear to be moving into other areas.

"It's really nowhere near where it was a month ago when we were seeing 10 a day. We're not really seeing the cases like we did a few weeks ago," Manrique said.

The only way to determine if the death was caused by the flu would be to test a tissue sample from a dead dog, said Manrique, which is bad news for Calloway since the hospital where Dante died does not participate in the voluntary testing.

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