Journal of Veterinary Medicine and Health
Open Access

Distemper is one of the serious diseases which occur in dogs. It is highly contagious virus that will affect the respiratory, gastrointestinal and also nervous system in all the stages of life. Usually it will spread in dogs, wildlife foxes, wolves, and skunks.

This type of disease can be prevented through the core vaccinations that are performed by the expertise veterinarian’s. this can be transmitted through respiratory secretions like coughing, sneezing. There is an high chance to transmit to other dogs (if one dog sneezes or coughed which is suffering from that disease that respiratory particles can travel to 25 feet and it will occur to other dogs as well, and it is highly dangerous and it has more exposure too.

There are 3 ways to spread this disease

1. Through direct contact with the infected animal

2. Through the airborne (cough particles or sneezed particle)

3. Through the placenta.

Airborne can spread directly to the other animal like common cold, when an diseases animal or infected animal sneezes or barks, then the droplets will spread into the environment and it will affect tot the other animal. it may either spread through food and water. The main thing which we have to notice is these diseased droplets will never last long in the environment. Once it affected to the dog the it will stay up to several months and making that dog into risk and serious situation.

Not only the dogs, but also the other wild animals like wolves, raccoons, foxes for these animals also this disease will infect and turns into serious stage.

These are having different range of symptoms and vary form the dogs. Once the dog is infected with this disease then the virus will replicate and it will spread to the lymphatic tissue of respiratory tract. And then gastrointestinal tract, nervous system and those results into stages of symptoms.

Stage 1

The common and first stage is watery or pus discharge from the eyes. That leads to fever, loss of appetite, and nasal discharge, for most of the dogs fever will stands for 3 to 6 days after the infection occurred. Sometimes it depends on the severity of the disease. Some common first stage symptoms are; Fever, coughing, vomiting, sneezing, diarrhea, dermatitis. Inflammation.

Stage 2

This attacks on the nervous system and these are signs and symptoms; Head tilting, circling (moving like a circle/ revolving), partial paralysis, muscle twitching, seizures, convulsions.

There is no cure for this disease, veterinarians can diagnose this disease through several clinical trials and signs of symptoms like necropsy, postmortem. Once the disease is diagnosed then the treatment process is easy and we can easily treat the vomiting, diarrhea, and some neurological symptoms disease cure and treatment is completely depends on the strain and virus which is attacked to the dog. There are three different ways to treat; Respiratory support, gastrointestinal support, Neurological support. Respiratory includes breathing problems and coughing, gastric problems involves dehydration, weakness, some bacterial infections, vomiting’s, nausea sensation. Neurological problems involve seizures, brain damage, sometimes it turns into death.