Winter is often associated with the flu, coughs, and classrooms that sound like hospital rooms. However, this year, it’s not just humans falling sick—numerous cases of dogs getting sick across the United States have been frightening many dog owners during this cold season. As dog owners ourselves, we’ve heard about minimizing contact with other dogs to avoid a mysterious respiratory virus that has been afflicting canines around the country. Especially with the holiday season coming up, there has been a series of warnings of keeping dogs in kennels or bringing them to dog parks, which can increase the chance of exposure to this virus.
Recently, laboratories have been racing to find a cure for this pathogen—which still doesn’t have a name besides the “mystery illness”—and working to understand whether this fatal disease is viral or bacterial. The American Veterinary Medical Association has been asking vets across the country to continue making reports of this virus, and whether it could be a strain of kennel cough, a well-known disease in the veterinary world.
According to Reuters, “symptoms including coughing that can last four to six weeks, which could be mild bronchitis or could escalate to pneumonia. Some acute cases have quickly become pneumonia within 24 to 36 hours.” Currently, this virus does not seem transmittable to humans. However, there has been concern raised from reports of this virus directly leading to severe pneumonia and death. Antibiotics that have been tested have not proved effective as a treatment.
Although experts haven’t identified a clear cause for the sickness spreading across more than a dozen American states, a New York Times article believes it could be a “variety of run-of-the-mill viruses and bacteria.” Additionally, many attributed the heightened susceptibility to disease and increase in widespread respiratory diseases in dogs to the COVID-19 pandemic, when dogs were isolated from other dogs, daycares, and kennels that could expose them to common respiratory pathogens.
If we should have learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that frantically buying canned goods and stocking up on toilet paper rolls is not the solution to stopping the rapid spread of a virus. Experts advise that there is no reason to worry excessively about this “mystery illness.” Rather, dog owners and other pet owners should discuss with their veterinarians about vaccinating their pets against common respiratory pathogens.
