How Can You Tell If A Dog Has Rabies

How can you tell if a dog has rabies you might be curious about the severity of rabies in dogs. In this blog post, our team of veterinarians in Santa Clarita aims to provide you with essential information about this life-threatening disease and emphasize the importance of vaccinating your dog against it.

What Is Rabies & How Can It Affect My Dog?

Rabies is a virus that targets the brain and spreads through contact with the saliva of an infected animal. This highly dangerous virus can affect a wide range of animals, including pets, livestock, wildlife, and humans.

According to the CDC, there are approximately 5,000 cases of rabies in animals reported each year, with the majority occurring in wild animals. Bats, raccoons, foxes, and skunks are among the animals most commonly known to carry the virus.

Tragically, rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms manifest. Infected animals typically succumb to the virus within a few days of exhibiting signs of infection.

How Can A Dog Get Rabies

For a dog to contract rabies, it typically requires direct contact with the saliva of an infected animal, often through a bite. After exposure, it generally takes about 10 to 14 days for clinical symptoms to become apparent.

However, the onset of symptoms can vary significantly and may take months or even years to manifest, depending on the route of exposure to the virus. The virus must travel along the dog’s nervous system to reach the brain, and the duration of this journey can influence the timing of symptom development.

Symptoms of Rabies In Dogs

Dogs infected with rabies may display a variety of signs and symptoms, which may include:

• Barking differently
• Excessive drooling
• Uncharacteristic aggression, fearfulness, or even affection 
• Overreaction to touch, sound or light 
• Biting at the site where they were exposed to the virus 

• Difficulty swallowing 
• Loss of balance when walking 
• Partial or complete paralysis
• Falling 
• Seizures

What Are The Stages Of Rabies?

Typically, there are three distinct stages of the rabies virus in dogs. Let’s outline each stage along with the accompanying signs and symptoms:

Prodromal stage

In the initial stage of rabies, dogs often exhibit behavioral changes that deviate from their usual personality traits. For example, a typically shy dog might become more outgoing, while a normally sociable dog might display increased aggression. If you observe any unusual shifts in your dog’s behavior, particularly following an encounter with an unknown animal, it’s crucial to isolate them from other pets and family members and promptly contact your veterinarian for further guidance.

Furious stage

During this stage, your pet’s behavior can become increasingly dangerous as they may exhibit anxiety and aggression. They might excessively vocalize and even suffer from seizures, leading to a loss of appetite. The virus has now invaded the nervous system, impairing your dog’s ability to swallow, which often manifests as excessive drooling, commonly referred to as “foaming at the mouth.

Paralytic stage

In the terminal stage of rabies, a rabid dog will lapse into a coma and experience respiratory failure. Unfortunately, this is often the stage at which pets succumb to the illness. Typically occurring around seven days after the initial onset of symptoms, death typically follows within three days.

How to Test a Dog for Rabies?

If your dog hasn’t been vaccinated against rabies and encounters an infected animal, you’ll confront some challenging choices.

Since testing a living animal for rabies isn’t feasible, you’ll need to decide whether to quarantine your pet and monitor for symptoms or opt for euthanasia.

Regrettably, pets placed in quarantine, even if initially asymptomatic, are unlikely to survive, and prolonging their suffering is not advisable.

Is Rabies Treatable?

Once your dog has contracted rabies, veterinarians have no effective treatment to offer. Your only options are quarantine or euthanasia. That’s why prevention through vaccination is paramount.

What Is The Rabies Vaccine?

Rabies vaccines boast high efficacy rates, eliciting robust immune responses. The likelihood of vaccine failure is exceedingly low.

While regulations concerning pet vaccinations fluctuate across jurisdictions, maintaining your pet’s rabies vaccinations ensures protection for both your dog and the individuals in your household from this lethal neurological illness how can you tell if a dog has rabies.

Can I vaccinate my own dog for rabies?

In some cases, if you opt to vaccinate your pet for rabies, it’s crucial to acknowledge that state public health and law enforcement authorities may not acknowledge the vaccination as valid. Consequently, both you and your pet may be treated as if no rabies vaccine was administered.

However, by providing proof of your dog’s rabies vaccination, you can substantiate the absence of rabies transmission risk. Conversely, if your dog’s vaccinations are not current, they could face quarantine or, in severe cases, euthanasia due to the perceived threat.

Furthermore, dogs that have bitten individuals typically need to be confined for a minimum of 10 days to monitor for rabies development how can you tell if a dog has rabies.

How Often Do Dogs Need Rabies Shots?

While not mandated in every region, the rabies vaccine is indispensable for safeguarding your puppy or dog against a range of potentially fatal diseases.

Our veterinarians in Santa Clarita advocate for the inclusion of the rabies vaccine as a core component in the vaccination regimen for puppies aged 14 to 16 weeks. This vaccine is a fundamental part of our standard puppy and dog vaccination protocols.

As vaccine antibodies naturally decline over time, the efficacy of the rabies vaccine wanes accordingly. Therefore, follow-up booster doses are necessary.

Boosters serve to bolster immunity in animals that may not have mounted an adequate response to the initial vaccination. These boosters should be administered once your dog reaches 12 to 16 months of age and then repeated every 1 to 3 years, depending on the specific vaccine formulation recommended by your veterinarian how can you tell if a dog has rabies.

Are There Rabies Vaccine Side Effects?

The side effects of rabies vaccinations in dogs typically arise from the immune system’s response to the vaccine. These may include:

• Mild loss of appetite 
• Mild to moderate energy loss for 24 to 36 hours following vaccination 
• Mild fever
• Potential swelling or soreness at the injection site

It’s essential to recognize that some dogs may develop a small, painless swelling at the injection site after receiving the rabies vaccine, which can persist for a couple of weeks. In rare cases, a small, circular area of hair loss may also occur at the injection site.

However, it’s also possible that some dogs may not experience any side effects at all from the vaccine. If any side effects do occur, they typically begin within an hour of vaccination and resolve within one or two days.

Although rare, some dogs may experience a severe reaction to the rabies vaccine, often due to an immune system overreaction. Serious side effects usually present immediately or within one or two hours after vaccination.

Rare reactions to the rabies vaccine may include:

• Diarrhea
• Vomiting
• Cough
• Swelling in the face, eyes or muzzle

• Fainting or collapse 
• Hives, which appear as firm lumps on the dog’s body and may or may not be itchy
• Severe swelling or pain at the injection site

Seek emergency veterinary care for your dog if you observe any of the symptoms mentioned above.

Can My Dog Get Rabies If They Are Vaccinated?

Even though there’s a slight chance your vaccinated dog could still contract rabies, it’s exceedingly rare. The rabies vaccine is highly effective, and vaccinated dogs seldom become infected even after a bite from a rabid animal.