Gee, bad news for america.

[asal]

 

and now a dog from Korea has brought in an untreatable distemper, putting our North American dogs at risk because there is no shot to protect our dogs.

 

 

 

 

This is a plane stacked to the roof of rescue dogs being flown into Lancaster last year to a Megadoption event in Philadelphia. If a breeder packed dogs in a plane like this, the pict would be posted on every major news fb page. Wonder how the water in the dixie cups zip tied to the crates lasted during a long flight?

 

[_PL_]

26 minutes ago, asal said:

This is a plane stacked to the roof of rescue dogs being flown into Lancaster last year to a Megadoption event in Philadelphia. If a breeder packed dogs in a plane like this, the pict would be posted on every major news fb page. Wonder how the water in the dixie cups zip tied to the crates lasted during a long flight?

 

 This is not ok I don't care if it's rescue or not. All I see is discomfort and stress and potential for contagious disease. 

No idea what the rescue situation is in America TBH but that transport is disgusting and should be banned.

[asal]

apparently america has shut down so many "backyard" breeders they are importing hundreds of thousands of dogs to stock their "rescues"..

[tdierikx]

No words... after reading the article...

 

T.

[sandgrubber]

8 hours ago, asal said:

apparently america has shut down so many "backyard" breeders they are importing hundreds of thousands of dogs to stock their "rescues"..

There is a surplus of homeless dogs in the South and a deficit in the NE and West coast.  Dogs are also brought in from Mexico, and sometimes further abroad (eg, Frenchies, at high prices, from Eastern Europe and dogs meant for eating, with much publicity, from Korea). Restrictions on backyard breeding are highly variable, but in general far fewer than in Oz. Subsidized spay/neuter programs are widespread. 

[Tempus Fugit]

Dogs & Lancaster County bring to mind the ongoing fight between rescuers and Amish puppy mills. The newspaper appears to be on the side of the Amish.

 

[Little Gifts]

I have a friend in the US whose sister fosters dogs. They are in Washington and her fosters are often large breed dogs 'saved' from poorer European areas. I just saw it as them providing a rescue service to areas that had none. All it takes is someone with connections in a European city. I know the same happens with the UK because of how freely the English travel throughout Europe. Quarantine laws are also very different.

[asal]

does she know if the bit about " an untreatable distemper, from an

 imported Koren dog"  is true?

 

We are so lucky in australia distemper is almost extinct now, terrible to see, even when some survive so many are are so damaged

Edited May 7, 2019 by asal

[tdierikx]

3 hours ago, asal said:

We are so lucky in australia distemper is almost extinct now, terrible to see, even when some survive so many are are so damaged

It is definitely still here @asal... it's one of the diseases that kills wild foxes in decent numbers... we just don't see it as much in domestic dogs now is all. But there are still a number of cases reported in dogs every year...

 

T.

[Rebanne]

Distemper certainly is still here in Australia. It was one of the diseases one of my dogs was tested for recently.

[asal]

certainly haven't seen it in 60 years and hope to never see it again, my dad was considered quite weird, all his dogs were vaccinated, in those days his were the only ones in the street.

Edited May 7, 2019 by asal

[tdierikx]

There have actually been cases reported in Sydney relatively recently... mostly in the areas where there are low vaccination rates...

 

T.

[Maddy]

19 hours ago, Little Gifts said:

I have a friend in the US whose sister fosters dogs. They are in Washington and her fosters are often large breed dogs 'saved' from poorer European areas. I just saw it as them providing a rescue service to areas that had none. All it takes is someone with connections in a European city. I know the same happens with the UK because of how freely the English travel throughout Europe. Quarantine laws are also very different.

This. My aunt is currently living/working in Kazakhstan and the situation for street dogs there is terrible. Recently, she posted pictures of two stray dogs she'd been feeding, both dogs had newborn litters in a nearby culvert. Only a few days after birth, most of those poor babies are already dead. Any survivors will face a short, brutal life on the streets. If they are impounded, they may die immediately due to horrendous care conditions and if they survive that, no one wants to own mongrel dogs, and so they will be killed anyway. In some of these countries, things like humane societies simply don't exist. For the dogs who live there, there is no possibility of salvation. 

If those dogs can be helped by removing them to countries where they could be rehomed, provided the proper procedures are in place, why not? 

 

Below is a photo of "Mummy", one of the strays. My aunt and some local children have been caring for these dogs as best they can, there is simply no other help available. Despite being a stray, Mummy allows humans to handle her remaining puppy and would likely make a good companion for someone. But because of people like Asal, people who hate welfare groups so vigorously that they'll go as far as to attack rescue groups, dogs like Mummy will live and die on the streets.

 

Asal, I'm trying so hard to be tolerant of you and your issues, but this is not the first time you have purposely gone after rescue groups. You don't consider the harm you do to rescue (or to the animals they help) because you are selfishly obsessed with your own experience of the RSPCA. YOU had a bad experience, but that does not negate the immeasurable help some of these groups provide for animals.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Maddy

[Diva]

The problem for me is that proper quarantine and health procedures don’t seem to be in place for some of these mass international movements of dogs. Regulation and compliance, let alone ethics, don’t seem to be up to the risk. 

 

I don’t see the point of saving some if in doing that it causes massive risk for the resident dog population.  As much as my heart bleeds for the dogs in need the biosecurity risks are not diminished by their need. I have vet friends in the US who are very disturbed by the risks that are arising out of some of the shipments. 

 

Of course doing it safely is more expensive, which is why I prefer to support in-country rescue efforts where I can.

 

My breed has an international rescue arm and I contribute to them. But they are very careful around the contagious diseases issues. 

 

Apart from their own high ethics I am sure they know that their support from the breed community world wide would evaporate in a second if they were found to have been careless and put other dogs at risk. 

Edited May 8, 2019 by Diva

[Maddy]

I couldn't say whether or not proper vaccination/quarantine happens because I don't know the details for the groups involved. That said, given it is the law in the US that dogs be vaccinated at least for rabies, I have to assume certain requirements must be met on import? 

I don't see it as being much different to moving dogs around interstate within Australia- there is still the risk of undiagnosed/incubating disease, and perhaps even more so because there is virtually nothing in place for movement of dogs between states of Australia. The only real exception is Tasmania and hydatids, but even that can be lax, depending on how the dog enters the state. Distemper and parvo still exist here (distemper was diagnosed in the south of Tasmania earlier this year, from memory) and with some groups/people starting to drift away from the practice of  prophylactically worming/flea treating dogs (only treating when infestation is so severe that it is immediately obvious), disease and parasites will spread locally. Poor practices are poor practices, regardless of how far the animal is travelling. 

One case of distemper does not confirm overall poor practices, nor does one photo of improper transport. It's no different to the photos from Storybook, they were terrible but they weren't indicative of the care provided by the average rescue group. I'll reserve judgement of individual groups and their importation/transport practices until actual evidence is brought forward.

[sandgrubber]

4 hours ago, Diva said:

The problem for me is that proper quarantine and health procedures don’t seem to be in place for some of these mass international movements of dogs. Regulation and compliance, let alone ethics, don’t seem to be up to the risk. 

 

Of course doing it safely is more expensive, which is why I prefer to support in-country rescue efforts where I can.

 

 

The cost of thoroughly testing is huge and, at least in the US, no one lab is internationally certified to do all tests. You need international certification and verification, because where there's money to be made, people find ways to cheat. When I brought my 3 dogs from the US to NZ it came to several hundred dollars each in screening costs, plus a lot of hassles getting to vets at proper intervals, getting papers stamped, etc... and that didn't cover the Asian distemper strain.  I can't see any rescue doing all the required work... though a puppy mill breeding expensive breeds might be able to do it and still make a profit. 

[Little Gifts]

My feeling is if the transference of disease becomes a major issue for the US then the US will do something about it. But until then I don't see their average independant rescue groups being much different to ours - run on the smell of an oily rag by mostly volunteers, with the number of cats and dogs needing assistance outweighing the resources. If a couple have decided to take on out of country dogs it is because they have the network to do so, not because they have run out of dogs locally. Their social issues are more extreme than ours so you have poverty and homelessness on much larger levels that will be impacting why animals need rescue. If you got rid of puppy mills out here the whole rescue system wouldn't suddenly be devoid of dogs so I don't think it is radically different in America (or any other first world country for that matter) where puppy mill dogs are only a percentage of all the dogs who need saving.

 

But wouldn't it still be a brilliant day if they didn't exist and numbers circulating the rescue system were manageable!!!!

[Diva]

There was the canine influenza outbreak in the US a couple of years ago traced to Korean rescues as well as the current distemper case, and according to this Cornell article the only requirement for entry is a rabies certificate that is fairly easily forged in some countries. Dogs with rabies have been imported into the US. Bringing in dogs from different populations with vastly different disease incidence, possibly different viral strains, and vaccination status is a quite different level of biosecurity risk to moving them within the one country where populations mix all the time. The regulators in the US are as culpable as the rescues, I am so glad for this country’s strict requirements.

https://www.vet.cornell.edu/news/20190318/new-strain-canine-distemper-virus-arrives-north-america

Edited May 8, 2019 by Diva

[Maddy]

14 hours ago, Diva said:

There was the canine influenza outbreak in the US a couple of years ago traced to Korean rescues as well as the current distemper case, and according to this Cornell article the only requirement for entry is a rabies certificate that is fairly easily forged in some countries. Dogs with rabies have been imported into the US. Bringing in dogs from different populations with vastly different disease incidence, possibly different viral strains, and vaccination status is a quite different level of biosecurity risk to moving them within the one country where populations mix all the time. The regulators in the US are as culpable as the rescues, I am so glad for this country’s strict requirements.

https://www.vet.cornell.edu/news/20190318/new-strain-canine-distemper-virus-arrives-north-america

Given the potential economic impact of disease outbreak (especially for zoonotics), I'm honestly surprised that the rabies certificate is the only requirement for entry. Despite the fact that North America is crawling with interesting diseases anyway (yersinia pestis in prairie dogs, prions in the deer, fun!) you'd think they'd have some quarantine period, even if only two weeks or so. 

Australia's requirements might be more strict on paper, but enforcement seems to be very hit or miss. Not long ago, someone in the south of the state found some sort of turtle. Because of things like the Astacopsis gouldi and assorted other endangered, crunchy little creatures, turtles are banned entirely in Tasmania. Given a living creature can't be sealed up in an airtight bag for smuggling in, you'd think the sniffer dogs would have been able to detect it. But that relies on the handler getting through all the people coming off a plane, and it just doesn't happen. One handler for ~200 people is insufficient. Inadequate resources is how places like Tasmania- which should be very easy to maintain biosecurity for- are once again home to Echinococcus granulosus. Millions of dollars were spent on eradicating a terrible parasite, but underfunded biosecurity allowed it to return. Eventually, some human will get unlucky and catch themselves a case of worms in the brain or heart, and then the public will demand to know why it failed. The same public that will fight like hell to fund an AFL football team to play in Tasmania, have zero interest in supporting BT and will even purposely break containment zones for things like fruitfly, all while complaining about BT and the terrible inconvenience of being sniffed at an airport  

The problem, is that many people don't understand the implications of certain things getting in. And this includes rescue groups. You have rescue groups in Tasmania, bringing dogs down from the mainland, possibly carrying hydatids or strains of parvo that we don't have. Neither of those things sound that serious but the hydatids can and will kill humans. There is no malice intended (of course) but it's a lack of education. If governments put more funding in enforcing biosecurity, and also into educating the public about the risks, I'm sure the average person would comply, once they understood the reasoning behind it. And this applies to the US, too. If one or two major groups aren't doing the right thing, many smaller groups will follow, assuming it is the legitimate way of doing things. Education is the cheapest and most effective means of improving biosecurity. And let's be honest, asal's post was never really about biosecurity anyway. It was about her own issue with the RSPCA and any group she perceives to be animal rights or welfare.

[sandgrubber]

Biosecurity is harder if you're not an island, especially if wildlife freely crosses borders and wild species are closely related to domesticated species. It'd take a substantial and uninterrupted wall to keep coyotes, raccoons, wild pigs, etc. from carrying diseases to the US from Mexico... or from the US to Canada.