Brucellosis in dogs is a zoonotic disease caused by Brucella. Brucella is highly resistant and can survive in soil, water, and milk for a long time. This bacteria is very likely to cause miscarriage to dogs. Brucellosis in dogs is usually related to contact with sick cattle, sick sheep, and sick dogs.
The transmission of this disease is closely related to mating, eating infectious foods, or contacting miscarriage fetuses, placenta and vaginal secretions, so it often occurs in shepherd dogs.
1. The causes of brucellosis:
1. Brucellosis is mainly found in the reproductive organs of pregnant female animals, and is excreted out with the fetus, fetal water, vaginal secretions and milk that are delivered or miscarried. There are also a large number of pathogens in the semen of sick male animals, which can often be transmitted with breeding. Therefore, sick animals are the source of infection of this disease.
2. Brucella is very contagious. It can not only penetrate the damaged skin and mucous membranes, but also penetrate the human body through normal skin and mucous membranes. It also has many ways of infection. In addition to being infected through the skin and mucosa, it can also be infected through the digestive tract, reproductive tract and respiratory tract, which has brought great difficulties to epidemic prevention. In addition to dogs, cattle, sheep, pigs and humans can be infected and become infected. In particular, brucellosis in cattle and sheep is often the main source of infection for brucellosis in dogs and other animals.
3. Brucella has strong resistance and can survive in soil, water, and milk for a long time. Heat it at 100 degrees Celsius for a few minutes to kill it. It has weak resistance to disinfectants. 3% lesuer, 2% formalin, 5% lime lotion, etc. can kill the bacteria within minutes.
2. Clinical characteristics of brucellosis:
1. Pregnant female dogs usually suffer from miscarriage without any prodromal symptoms in the late pregnancy, and may also suffer from miscarriage and general lymph node enlargement in the early pregnancy. After a miscarriage, the female dog will discharge secretions from the vagina for a long time.
2. Most of the miscarriage fetuses are stillborn, and some live, but they often die within hours or days. Pneumonia, endocarditis and hepatitis can be seen in infected fetuses.
3. Epididymitis, testicular inflammation, testicular atrophy, prostatitis and scrotal dermatitis are often present in male dogs. Dogs with epididymiitis often show mental anxiety, licking the skin of the scrotum, causing severe ulcers.
4. Most sick dogs lack obvious clinical symptoms, especially young dogs and unpregnant dogs. Therefore, it is difficult to diagnose based solely on clinical symptoms, and it must rely on pathogen isolation and serological tests. Abortion of fetus, blood, urine, vaginal secretions, semen and milk can be used for testing.
III. Prevention and treatment measures for brucellosis:
There is currently no effective treatment method for this disease. Generally, the method of eliminating sick dogs is used to prevent epidemic and spread; since the invasion of canine-type brucellosis on people is not strong, preventing this disease does not occupy an important position in public health. For prevention and control, the following measures can be referred to:
1. Strengthen quarantine, and blood should be collected twice a year for serum agglutination tests.
2. For miscarriage dogs, samples of aborted fetus or serum should be collected and tested, bacterial isolation and culture or serum agglutination test should be carried out to find out the cause.
3. Sick dogs should be isolated from other dogs to prevent infection.
4. The site environment contaminated by sick dogs can be disinfected with 2% to 5% bleach solution, 10% lime milk or hot alkali water. The miscarriage of fetuses, seborrheic veins and amniotic fluid should be properly treated.