“The things we really look for are vomiting, diarrhea and if they seem fatigued in the field during training,” said Army Sgt. 1st Class William Etheridge, kennel master at the 212th Military Police Detachment’s canine unit, located on Fort Belvoir, an Army base in Fairfax County.
He said that because no dogs at the unit are showing signs of canine influenza, the base veterinarian, which services both working dogs and household pets, has not given the unit any specific guidance on the flu.
“They haven’t indicated that we need to do things differently,” Etheridge said.
In the meantime, he said he’s scrubbing the kennels daily and bathing the dogs regularly, at least once a week. Because ticks are common on the heavily wooded base, he said he and the handlers inspect the dogs often throughout the day and would notice if they were sick.
Etheridge said some of the dog teams from Fort Belvoir are currently in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing out explosives and weapons caches. For security reasons, he couldn’t specify how many or exactly when they left, but he said the dogs were not likely affected because they deployed at least two months before the local flu outbreak occurred.
He said many of the dogs remain on the home front, and are frequently called in to support the Secret Service when the president travels anywhere within the National Capital Region, which includes northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and reaches into Maryland.
That means, while off base and out in the community, they run the risk of coming into contact with sick dogs or contaminated areas.
“The virus can survive for up to 48 hours on clothes and hair,” said Karen Diviney, director of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter, which was closed after more than 30 dogs were quarantined when they progressively started sneezing and coughing, symptoms of H3N8, on August 2.
“By August 6, we knew we had a problem,” she said.
She said the shelter staff quarantined every dog, sick or not, to contain those suspected of having the flu. By Friday, they confirmed three dogs had tested positive, with dozens of tests pending and 27 dogs showing symptoms of the flu.
Diviney said the flu killed one dog on July 27, at the Deepwood Veterinarian Clinic in Centreville, Va., about 8 miles from the shelter.
“We have to realize what we have here, and we really need to take extra precautions,” she said.
Lucy Caldwell, public information officer of the Fairfax County Police Department, said the flu can spread from one dog to another on the street by secretions, such as saliva on a fire hydrant. But the places of greatest concern are those where large populations of dogs are kept in close proximity, such as a shelter or boarding facility, she said.
Caldwell said the police department has oversight of both the county animal shelter and the county’s police canine unit.
For the most part, she said Fairfax police dogs are not at high risk of getting the flu, because they live in homes with their handlers and are rarely exposed to large groups. But if the handlers need to board the dogs at a public facility for any reason, the working canines could be exposed to large populations.
“There are at least six police dogs that I can think of that we board on a regular basis,” said Birgit Burton, general manager of the Olde Towne Pet Resort in Springfield, Va., also in Fairfax County, about 17 miles from the closed shelter.
Burton said the resort has an arrangement with the Fairfax County police to board their service dogs when their handlers are either away on vacation or otherwise unable to care for them.
In all, the resort has 27 service dogs — 25 police and two from the Department of Homeland Security — listed in their database as either previous or anticipated guests.
During summer, Burton said the resort houses anywhere from 150 to 200 dogs daily.
She said she was not aware of any police canines currently at the facility, but said they still anticipate boarding many pets, and possibly police dogs, until at least the first week of September. “We’re still in our peak season until the Labor Day holiday passes,” she said.
If service dogs stay at the resort, they get special treatment, she said. Their kennels are labeled to distinguish them from pets and only specially trained staff members are authorized to walk and care for them.
“They’re not pets, they’re officers,” Burton said. “They have their own badges.”
She said although coughing is not uncommon among dogs, it could signal flu, and her staff is trained to recognize unusual coughs or symptoms. If suspected of being sick, the dogs are taken to special isolation areas.
Additionally Burton said the resort is equipped with a superior ventilation system designed to prevent the spread of communicable illnesses. “But no facility is 100 percent safe,” said Diviney, pointing out that the Deepwood clinic, which had four cases of H3N8 including one death, also had state-of-the-art ventilation.
“All it takes is for one dog to come in there,” she said.
And that one dog might be sick, but showing no symptoms at all, Diviney said.
She said dogs with H3N8 are most contagious when they are not showing symptoms.
According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the H3N8 virus existed in horses for about 40 years. Scientists believe the virus jumped to dogs, initially affecting only greyhounds, but now has adapted to spread efficiently among all types of dogs.
It’s not believed to affect humans, but through contact humans can spread it from dog to dog, the CDC reported.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on June 23 that it approved a new vaccine for canine influenza. The drug’s developer, Intervet/Schering-Plough, a global manufacturer of veterinary medicine, was granted a one-year conditional license, during which the USDA plans to monitor and evaluate the vaccine’s performance.
Diviney said using the vaccine, which requires two shots given two weeks apart, isn’t practical at the municipal shelter. She said many dogs at the shelter that get the first shot would likely be adopted and gone before they get the second.
The USDA recommends that the vaccine only be given to healthy dogs, and she said it was unlikely that the quarantined dogs at the shelter will get the vaccine soon. “They’re sick — now is not the time to do it,” Diviney said.
Like Etheridge at Fort Belvoir, both Burton and Diviney are taking their cues from the veterinary community in the county, and looking to them for more guidance on how to combat canine flu in the weeks and months ahead.
[Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA News Photo.]
Luke Pinneo is a freelance writer and editor based in Washington, D.C., specializing in government, business, profiles and family.
