Dog Flu Making The Rounds

Highly Contagious; Mimics Common Kennel Cough At First

(CBS)  Flu season is right around the corner. But people aren't the only ones who are vulnerable to influenza. There's a new strain of the bug showing up in dogs nationwide.

The Early Show resident veterinarian Dr. Debbye Turner explains that canine influenza is easily transmitted from dog to dog. It's shown up in kennels in three states, and greyhound racetracks in seven.

Because this strain is new, she says, there's no vaccination for it, and dogs are very susceptible.

She visited one boarding facility where an infected dog started an outbreak. The virus quickly spread, prompting the kennel to temporarily close its doors to do a thorough cleaning job.

"We're using hospital-grade disinfectant," says Debra Bennetts, a spokesperson for the Best Friends Pet Care Center in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. "We're doing multiple cleanings of the same surfaces, rinsing, cleaning again, rinsing. Every square inch of the facility is being scrubbed."

In late August, a few dogs at the center came down with what staffers thought was the common respiratory infection known as kennel cough. But a week later, some of those dogs developed pneumonia.

"At that point," Bennetts says, "we knew we were dealing with something more serious and we made a decision to close temporarily to stop the spread of the illness."

Within a week, the facility was completely empty. Nearly 100 dogs contracted the disease, and 15 became so sick that they had to be hospitalized.

"After we started seeing five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 cases of this, all within a 10-day span, (we knew) this wasn't just kennel cough we were dealing with," says Dr. Heather Troyer, a veterinarian at the Oradell Animal Hospital in Paramus, N.J. "This was something else that was very severe."

A series of tests revealed the culprit was canine flu, which dogs have no immunity to, Turner says.