Dogs and Raccoons Share Oral Rabies Vaccine Treats

Wildlife control professionals have often used a type of oral vaccine given as bait to raccoons in an attempt to control the spread of rabies. It works well, but it seems that dogs seem to find the treats left out the raccoons agreeable to their pallets as well.

According to rabies.com the disease causes severe swelling of the brain and can be found in the saliva of mammals. Bite is the most common method by which the disease gets transmitted, but scratching or licking can also cause rabies to proliferate. Without treatment, the disease can take between 20 to 60 days to incubate and symptoms include loss of conscious, fever, insomnia, headache, anxiety, hyper-salivation and the most famous symptom foaming at the mouth. Death usually follows afterwards when a person or animal develops these symptoms.

Golden Retrievers in particular seem to find the pieces of oral vaccine put out as bait for the raccoons a tasty treat. The oral rabies vaccine will not permanently harm the dog but will cause gastrointestinal stress in the animal such as diarrhea. The pieces of bait which are mostly distributed by hand but can also be distributed by air are safe to hundreds of species. (This probably will not comfort the owner of a sick golden retriever who brought one of these “treats” home with him and now has made a mess on the floor.)

The illness tends to travel along waterways which have often been a mystery to the scientists studying who the disease spreads. The oral vaccine bait which is laden with fish protein is distributed along areas where raccoons and other common carriers of what the Greeks called hydrophobia are common.

The new vaccine intended to be eaten by wildlife and not by household pets is part of an immune barrier strategy which people working for the Centers of Disease Control and various state fish and game departments hope will prevent and eventually eliminate future rabies cases altogether.

If you suspect that a pet or someone else you know has been bitten by a rabid animal it is important to get them to a doctor immediately to start on the treatments necessary to prevent the disease from reaching its dangerous and fatal stages. Once raccoons no longer become rabid, scientists can move on to how to present the disease in one of its next most common transmitters, bats.