| Why does my pet need the rabies vaccine?
Although the majority of rabies cases occur in wildlife, most humans are
given the rabies vaccine as a result of exposure to domestic animals.
This explains the tremendous cost of rabies prevention in domestic animals
in the United States. While wildlife are more likely to be rabid
than are domestic animals in the United States, the amount of human
contact with domestic animals greatly exceeds the amount of contact with
wildlife. Your pets and other domestic animals can be infected when
they are bitten by rabid wild animals. When "spillover" rabies
occurs in domestic animals, the risk to humans is increased. Pets
are therefore vaccinated by your veterinarian to prevent them from
acquiring the disease from wildlife, and thereby transmitting it to
humans.
What happens if a neighborhood cat bites me?
You should seek medical evaluation for any animal bite. However,
rabies is uncommon in dogs, cats, and ferrets in the United States.
Very few bites by these animals carry a risk of rabies. If the cat
(or dog or ferret) appeared healthy at the time you were bitten, it can be
confined by its owner for 10 days and observed. No anti-rabies
prophylaxis is needed. No person in the United States has ever
contracted rabies from a dog, cat or ferret held in quarantine for 10
days.
If a dog, cat or ferret appeared ill at the time it bit you or becomes
ill during the 10 day quarantine, it should be evaluated by a veterinarian
for signs of rabies and you should seek medical advice about the need for
anti-rabies prophylaxis.
The quarantine period is a precaution against the remote possibility
that an animal may appear healthy, but actually be sick with rabies.
To understand this statement, you have to understand a few things about
the pathogenesis of rabies (the way the rabies virus affects the animal it
infects). From numerous studies conducted on rabid dogs, cats, and
ferrets, we know that rabies virus inoculated into a muscle travels from
the site of the inoculation to the brain by moving within nerves.
The animal does not appear ill during this time, which is called the
incubation period and which may last for weeks to months. A bite by
the animal during the incubation period does not carry a risk of rabies
because the virus is not in saliva. Only late in the disease, after
the virus has reached the brain and multiplied there to cause an
encephalitis (or inflammation of the brain), does the virus move from the
brain to the salivary glands and saliva. Also at this time, after
the virus has multiplied in the brain, almost all animals begin to show
the first signs of rabies. Most of these signs are obvious to even
an untrained observer, but within a short period of time, usually within 3
to 5 days, the virus has caused enough damage to the brain that the animal
begins to show unmistakable signs of rabies. As an added precaution,
the quarantine period is lengthened to 10 days.
What happens if my pet (cat, dog, ferret) is bitten by a wild
animal?
Any animal bitten or scratched by either a wild, carnivorous mammal or a
bat that is not available for testing should be regarded as having been
exposed to rabies. Unvaccinated dogs, cats, and ferrets exposed to a
rabid animal should be euthanized immediately. If the owner is
unwilling to have this done, the animal should be placed in strict
isolation for 6 months and vaccinated 1 month before being released.
Animals with expired vaccinations need to be evaluated on a case-by-case
basis. Dogs and cats that are currently vaccinated are kept under
observation for 45 days.
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