WUSV 2011 - ill dogs - Page 6

In my non-scientific opinion, but in the best interests of the sport, the WUSV should at a minimum send out a questionnaire to all competitors with critical questions:
Did your dog become sick?
What where the symptoms?
What is the report of your veterinarian?
Did your dog receive treatment?
Did you treat your dog prior to travel?
What product did you use?
When was it applied?
How was it applied?
Did you examine your dog daily for ticks?
Did you find any ticks?
ETC..

That would demonstrate due diligence for future WUSV events if they collected this data and passed it on to a Veterinary Teaching College. 
Then, the college could request blood samples from all dogs that became ill, or from ALL dogs that attended the event and a preliminary study, with further more scientific questions, could be done to discover if it is possible that the disease could have been contracted from sleeve contamination or NOT.  It might be helpful to submit the competition sleeves to the university laboratory.

There is much more that could be done.  Not place blame anywhere, but try by this method to prevent future occurrences of this nature, or at least discover why so many dogs became ill and perhaps discover a previously unknown vector.

PS:  I am not anywhere close to being an epidemiologist.  However, I worked, before my retirement, on two major North American avian influenza outbreaks as the sitrep, and worked closely with a dozen (+ or -) top epidemiologists, learning from them that it is data and investigation that provide the answers, not blame, conjecture or speculation. 

Connie Doan
BC Canada

The dogs of Eric Eisenberg (Team USA) and Russ  (Team Canada) are ill as well.

This is one of those learning curves I think. The remedy is simply have tick checkers at every event who comb threw whoever wants their dog checked. Simple. We have these at K9 rodeos and K9 derbys. They usually charge $2.00 a dog and spray on some pet cologne too. Kinda like the shoeshine boys at political round tables. Instead of looking to blame someone, just remedy the situation an prevent it ever happening again in the future. JMO.

Did nobody read the statement of Raino? no ticks had been seen on the affected dogs.

This bothered me from the beginning....that it is blamed on tick bites. I dont think ticks are a vector in this case. Transmission would take too long, according to the article posted on page 1 it takes at least a couple of days for the tick to be able to transmit the parasite. I am sure the handlers had their hands all over their dogs several times a day. Somthing else the dogs must have had in common.... tracking looked to be on dirt .... ingested dust? Another that comes to mind... bite sleeve?

Maybe someone ble to check if all affected dogs did bite work or tracking on the same day?

Is it possible that the problem was caused by some kind of chemical contamination on tracking fields and was misdiagnosed as Babesia?



 It bothers me too that it is blamed on ticks, since no ticks were found on dogs.

I was following this discussion and just had to add information I got from one of the biggest German shepherd forums.
There are a total of at least 15 dogs affected at this point of time. Some of them are in a very critical condition. There have been 3 dead dogs as of yet, 1 from Sweden, 2 from Asia.
Ill dogs were reported by the teams of Germany (5 ill dogs), Belgium, Canada, USA, France, Sweden. Some members of the German team are participating in the discussion on this forum. They were also warned only two weeks prior to the event. They all used spot on products and other tick prevention to protect their dogs. They also searched for ticks during their stay. One of the owners of an affected dog found only one tick at the shoulder of his dog. Another two, the third three ticks. They all were removed as fast as possible.
When they were talking to locals during the event they told them that they were astonished about the courage to bring an "unprotected" dog to the Ucraine. They were told that the spot on products of their home countries were not strong enough for the local ticks.
There is a vaccin against babesiosis which has to be applied at least half a year prior the the event. There is also a medication that can be given two weeks in advance which softens the effects of the disease. Local dogs are either protected by this vaccine, by stronger spot on products or they have a higher resistancy to Babesiosis given to them by antibodies of the mother dogs.
All these information were not given to the dog handlers. Now some of them have lost their dogs. Some of them are still fighting. Some of them will suffer lifelong consequences from this. And this to the best dogs and dog handlers of this breed. No championship in the world would have been worth this and many would not have participated had they known about the dangers in this region. Next year the rescue dog world championship will be held at the same area. I hope at least they will get a proper warning.

Sad news that 3 have passed away. I hope no more have the same fate.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Lets hope the lesson is learnt and this never happens again.
For one I will do as much research as possible in the future on the country that is being visited - easily said than done.

It must be devastating for the owners of these dogs to have their thrill at competing at the WUSV come crashing down in tragedy like this, I can't image what they must be feeling right now.  My heart goes out to them.

Margaret N-J

how terribly sad for everyone:(  Tick disease is nasty nasty business.  Honestly I don't think there is really anything that is 100% effective against tick diseases .   The majority of ticks that transmit are so 'minute' you'd never find them. 

I lost a gsd to neurological damage from chronic anaplasmosis, granted he wasn't a spring chicken, but devastating nontheless:(

My dogs now, are constantly coming up positive for anaplasmosis and I can't get rid of it:(  It sucks