Veterinarian View
Health & Reproduction questions answered and explained.
contributed article by Vince Collison DVM Collison Embryo | Collison Veterinary Services PC
collisonembryo.com
RABIES VACCINE
IT’S NOT JUST FOR DOGS & CATS
September 2019
When I was in veterinary school, a horse came into the clinics with a severe colic. The horse went into surgery and nothing obvious was found during the exploratory. A few intestines were moved around the abdomen, and the horse was closed up. During the recovery from anesthesia, the horse, once again, started to colic. The surgeon on the case immediately did a biopsy on the horse’s lip and took it up to the diagnostic lab. Within the hour, we had a positive diagnosis for rabies! We had all been examining the horse’s mouth on the initial exam, and the student health center required all of us to get a booster vaccination for rabies. This resulted
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in a resident and me experiencing severe reactions to the vaccine. The horse was euthanized. All of this could have been prevented had the horse received a rabies vaccine. During my time in practice, I have only been involved with one case of rabies in a kitten and one case in a dog. Other than skunks and bats, most of the rabies we have seen has been in cattle and horses. The main reason to bring this up is that many people do not think about rabies in cattle or horses. I think that we have seen very little rabies in cats and dogs because of the regular use of the vaccine in small animals. There are rabies vaccines approved for horses and cattle.
We have always recommended that owners vaccinate their horses for rabies at the time they do their West Nile and EWT vaccinations. We do not normally recommend vaccinating cattle for rabies, but if you live in a rabies endemic area, this is something to consider for your high-value cattle. Most show cattle, donors and sires that have semen sales have values that are higher than the average commodity cattle. For the minimal cost of the rabies vaccine, you can prevent a 100% fatal disease. The way rabies affects an animal or human is that the virus travels via the nerves from the location of the bite from a rabid animal to the brain where it causes fatal neurological damage. Rabies can incubate for as long as six months in an animal that is bitten in the hind leg by a rabid animal. The shortest incubation occurs when an animal is bitten in the
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