Rabid About Rabies Vaccination

My husband’s favorite story from my years in equine medicine is also one of the most disturbing.  I was a few years into practice, but still optimistic enough to attempt a Sunday brunch with my family while on-call.

I sipped the dregs of my latte, mostly foam at that point, pushed a bite of French toast around my plate, and congratulated myself on making it through a meal without any equine disasters.  Of course, that was the cue for my cell phone. 

I snapped the phone shut after a few words with the office and looked at Mike.  “I’ve gotta go.  The donkey died.”

Without missing a beat, my husband signaled the waitress as I began stuffing phone into pocket and mopping the jam off of our youngest child’s face.  “Can we get the check?” he asked.  “My wife needs to go decapitate a donkey.”

No, that’s not my idea of Sunday afternoon fun.  Unfortunately, the donkey in question was a rabies suspect.  And, even more unfortunately, rabies can only be diagnosed after death by examination of the brain in a laboratory.  That single experience was enough to make me well – rabid – about rabies vaccination.  Neurological donkeys are not fun.  Dead donkeys are less fun.  Removing the head of a dead, formerly neurological donkey in the field and then trying to find transportation to the diagnostic lab for said head is pretty much the opposite of fun.

September 28 is World Rabies Day.  Rabies is a preventable, neurologic, viral disease of mammals that is nearly always fatal. The rabies virus is transmitted through contact with infected brain/neurologic tissue or saliva.  The most common means of transmission is through the bite of an infected animal.

Key points to remember about rabies:

• It is preventable – vaccination is extremely safe and effective
• While most people think about rabid dogs, any mammal can contract rabies
• Common carriers for rabies in the U.S. include:
  • Bats
  • Skunks
  • Raccoons
  • Opossums
  • Foxes
  • Dogs
  • Cats
• Livestock such as horses typically contract the “dumb” form of rabies, characterized by depression early on rather than mania
• Rabies looks the same clinically as other neurological diseases of horses such as West Nile, Sleeping Sickness, and Neurologic Herpes
• Rabies is a zoonotic disease, meaning that it is transmissible from animals to humans.
• No treatment exists for rabies.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Once a person begins to exhibit signs of the disease, survival is rare. To date less than 10 documented cases of human survival from clinical rabies have been reported and only two have not had a history of pre- or postexposure prophylaxis.”

The American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) classifies rabies vaccination among its core vaccinations for horses.   Core vaccinations are defined by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) as those “that protect from diseases that are endemic to a region, those with potential public health significance, required by law, virulent/highly infectious, and/or those posing a risk of severe disease. Core vaccines have clearly demonstrated efficacy and safety, and thus exhibit a high enough level of patient benefit and low enough level of risk to justify their use in the majority of patients.”

Even show horses that live their entire lives in box stalls or arenas (sad, but that’s a topic for another post), can be exposed to rabies from feral cats, bats, or opossums.

Costs for a yearly rabies vaccine for a horse range from $10-$20 – a small price for the life of your horse, protection of human health, and preservation of your veterinarian’s sanity.