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Great dane health : the rabies
A dangerous disease
The rabies is a viral disease caused by a virus of the Rhabidoviridae family and of Lyssavirus type. It can infect all mammals and it's on all the continents.
The virulent substance is in the saliva, so the main way of infection is the bite of a rabid animal. But the rabies can be given by scratches or licking. The handling of dead animals can be infecting, because the virus keeps its virulence on the carcass during some hours. The virus is fragile out so it become inactive after some hours maximum. The virus can't cross a healthy skin ( no cut, no scratch).
The rabies is a dangerous dicease because always deadly after the first signs seen. It reaches the nervous system and it and causes a encephalitis or a myelitis.
The extrem theoric limit of the virulence of the saliva is 14 days before the appearance of the symptoms on the animal. In 80% of the cases, the virus is present in the organism only some hours to three days before the appearance of the first symptoms and an infected animal can begin to produce the virus up to 15 days before the first clinical symptoms. The virus is present at that time in all the secretions of the animal, in its saliva of course but also in its faeces.
Symptoms
For the dog, two kind of rabies are possible :
- a "furious" type in which in a first time the dog is taciturn and has a tendency to hide and do comings and goings. Then the dog has hallucinations and start yelling. The dog seems also to be itching and it scratches itself non-stop. In a second time, the animal becomes furious, it runs away its house, attack without reasonl animals or human beeings. In a third time, it comes a phasis of paralysis which begins by the back limbs or the jaws. In the end, the breath is very difficult and the death comes generally 4 or 5 days on average after the beginning of the symptoms.
- a "paralytic" type in which the phasis of paralysis comes immediately. Called also "dumb" rabies because the dog can't bark any more. It can't bite either because of the paralysis of the jaws. The dog slobbers a lot and can't swallow. The death comes by asphyxia after 2 or 3 days.
Treatment
No treatment exists. It's a 100% incurable and deadly disease when the first symptoms are seen.
However, it's possible to prevent of the desease but only before the appearance of the first symptoms. As proved by Louis Pasteur in 1885, it's only possible to act during the incubation period by giving a curative vaccination.
The only way to act is so the prevention, from which the interest to vaccinate regularly the dogs.
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