Michigan's top veterinarian warns of mysterious illness making dogs sick

all right uh veterinarians across Michigan are watching for that new respiratory virus that has been infecting dogs around the country I talked with the state's top vet Dr Nora weinland about what they are seeing and what owners should be looking out for right now I think what all dog owners are asking now is this respiratory illness in Michigan yet so no today we have not received any confirmed reports of any atypical canine uh respiratory or infectious respiratory disease it has gone by a number of different names it comes with symptoms that are very similar to many known illnesses so diagnosing it is a is a effort in excluding all of those known illnesses so I think that's really important for people to understand and to do that you have to work with a veterinarian I'm a dog owner and and I think you know dog owners we've all heard the term kennel cough what makes this particular uh virus so concerning that we're hearing more about it happening around the country so what is different what is the atypical part of it when we talk about it is that dogs don't recover like they do if they have the you know what we're used to seeing as kennel cough so usually you know within a few days dogs start to get better because it's generally a viral origin and mostly if your dog is well vaccinated and and in good nutrition and in good health they're going to recover from it but if they're immune suppressed um or anything is given to them that hurts their immune system like steroids you know they're going to have a hard time recovering This is highly contagious so what are some of the other things that we should keep in mind because I know a lot of people take their dogs to Doggy Daycare or they have um you know Common runs and groups with different kinds of dogs what should we be thinking about as dog owners so as dog owners it's it's always a good idea to know the dogs that your dog is going to interact with you know are they well vaccinated are they in good health because if they're not then you know there there's a chance that your dog is going to pick up something that maybe your dog hasn't seen before that maybe isn't vac you know your vaccine is old and it's about time to get revaccinated and and so you know really staying away from dogs of unknown health status is a really good um good advice um as well you know the communal water bowls that you sometimes see along the street that the merchants put out you don't know who Dr from that last so probably not the best idea as we watch as this has you know hit dogs in other parts of the country when and if would we know that it would actually come to Michigan is there any kind of reporting or anything like that that you'd be able to say six months from now we have X amount of cases so that's the hard thing you know this is a really common presentation of dogs the kennel cop is as we talked about and so it is not a reportable disease so we can't say oh this is way above basic line we're seeing a lot more of this really common disease because we don't have a base reporting to know what is normal I think what's going to happen we have a lot of diagnostic Labs out there that are looking we have veterinarians that are very aware and hopefully we have dog owners that are going to be talking to those veterinarians and getting those early samples you know before the secondary kind of bacterial infection sets in and then we have a chance through those you know Advanced Diagnostics that those labs can do to figure out is this really an unknown entity or are we just seeing unvaccinated you know susceptible for other reasons kind of dogs and a lot of you know press around it people talking social media driving something that's just normal a lot of good advice Sarah again when in doubt take your dog to the vet so they can get it all checked out

Channel: Click On Detroit | Local 4 | WDIV

Views: 1,194

Keywords: Dog, Dog Illness, Dogs, Michigan, Michigan Dogs, Michigan Vet, National, Nora Wineland, The Daily+ Live, mysterious illness, mystery illness, dog illness going around, mysterious dog illness

Id: pivu_viS-D4

Length: 3min 54sec (234 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023