Doggy Dundee

Guard Your Doggy, Cat, and Self – Against Giardia

G’day Mates! Well, it’s not real good news when there’s an outbreak of Giardia in communities. Tough part is, Giardia can be transmitted between pets and people. Doggy Dundee hopes to educate you to help you protect you and your pet.

What’s Giardia and Why Should I Care?

Here’s the science stuff from Vin.com. “Giardia is of the genus of a protozoan parasite that is infectious to both humans and pets all over the world.” Well, that stopped me cold! Yes, humans and dogs and cats! It’s not often a widespread issue, but this parasite may begin to be seen in larger number of cases in particular communities, and then it’s a real issue! Of course, even if it’s just your pet that happens to get it, Giardia becomes a real issue for you. (The image of Giardia shown is courtesy of Germs and Worms Blog)

Giardia can be passed from pets to humans, and from humans back to pets. The pesky parasite lives in a host’s intestines, but those pesky cysts that break away in stool  can survive in the outer environment; while, usually,  this is for only a short period, “…if it is cold and wet the cyst can live for many months…ready to infect a new host.”

Two more problematic aspects of doggy Giardia are that: (1) the incubation period can be 5 to 12 days (in cats, 5 to 16 days), so it’s really tough for you to peg the time or place of the infection (Frantic folks may “assume” to know, but you really don’t); and (2), Giardia shed organisms intermittently, making it difficult to detect. 

How Is  Giardia Transmitted?

Contaminated water is the most typical source of infection (i.e. keep dogs away from bowls used by other dogs). But transmission can then be like the proverbial snowball. As examples, dogs (or cats) may walk in another dog’s stool residue or roll on grass/dirt (more…)

Emergency Pet Evacuation Drill Brings Dogs and Cats Together

You can’t call Doggy Dundee prompt when it comes to film developing!

In late April 2009, Chase and I were one of many volunteers who participated in the major Jackson County Earthquake Drill – the part testing the animal shelter registration procedure for dogs who would be evacuated with their owners who were staying at an attached fictitious Red Cross shelter.

One brave pet evacuation volunteer brought her cat who she said loved dogs and would have dogs eating out of her paw. Chase and I finally got our personal photos developed of the animal shelter pet evacuation event, and

Chase meets Siamese

 as you can see Chase was quite curious and awed by this Siamese. This is the first time Chase has ever gotten this close to a kitty. It didn’t matter which dog came forward, either, all the dogs got along with the cat, who would sometimes roll over and start playing with these strange dogs, several of whom were strays from the shelter. It was quite an event for all the dogs and cats – and volunteers!

Read the newspaper article here about the emergency animal evacuation drill.