Spain kills "Excalibur", dog of woman with Ebola

[moonbladem]

Comments

[eveofrevolution]

[ginger_maya]

Ummm, there's such thing as quarantine? Also the benefit of putting the dog in quarantine and observing it?

[sio]

c'mon, that's logic. we can't have that anymore when just killing the dog due to an assumption is sooo much easier. :eyeroll:

[spyral_path]

The problem with quarantine is that dogs exposed to ebola will develop antibodies to the virus but won't ever show symptoms. He would have needed to be quarantined for the rest of his life, which is a terrible thing to do to a social animal like a dog.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15757552

I'm upset about this too, my first thought was why don't they quarantine him and test him to see if he does in fact have the virus, but they probably don't even know how long it takes the antibodies to form.

[sweetwaterpink]

MTE. I came in here to say the exact same thing. Why not quarantine the dog and run blood test first?

[scolaro]

"I think it's very unfortunate they are thinking of euthanizing that dog. They should really study it instead," he said.

This, so very much!
I don't get the panic reaction. Sure, if there's a possibility the dog is infected, by all means put it in quarantine.
It's not like they put down the husband of this poor woman, they simply separated him from society and are running tests on him now, I suppose. Why was that impossible in case of the dog?

[grace_om]

I don't see why they couldn't have quarantined the dog. It's not that unusual to quarantine a dog for possible infectious disease and shouldn't have been that difficult. Yes there would have been some expense, but also a invaluable opportunity to learn.

At this point I hope at least they haven't told her. Poor woman is fighting for her life and they kill her dog. Emotionally devastating.

[ar_feiniel_]

Poor woman is fighting for her life and they kill her dog. Emotionally devastating.

Seriously. If they don't care enough about the dog at least think of the woman and her family and all the stress they are already under right now. It reminds me of how victims of Hurricane Katrina weren't allowed to bring their pets on buses and rescue boats in the aftermath, which I can understand, but still... I vividly recall a man paddling with a tire who refused to get on a boat because he couldn't bring his dog. He said, "I've lost everything else and my dog has stood by me, I'm not leaving him." Some of these people lost EVERYTHING else, and asking them to give up the one thing they still had was too painful.

[ar_feiniel_]

They should have quarantined him first and done a blood test. Like, come on, it's not as if Spain's resources are stretched thin by a major outbreak of the disease exposing hundreds of dogs. It's ONE dog.