Dr. Lera Clone explains how dogs catch leptospirosis from contaminated water and why it matters to humans too. The disease needs IV fluids and weeks of antibiotics, but most dogs recover. The vaccine carries allergy risk, so vets only give it to dogs with real exposure.
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Foreign. Hey, guys. Dr. Lara here with Val and Indy. Indy is a. She's here today for her leptospirosis vaccine. And if you guys haven't seen Val in our videos before, she is one of my great team members. She is a veterinary technician. And so she is here today, or Indy's here today, rather, for a vaccination, which we call lepto for short. Now, leptospirosis is a condition which is typically transmitted in the urine of different animals, like possums, foxes, raccoons, cows. And it'll normally stay in what we call stagnant water. So, like, puddles and that kind of stuff. It doesn't do well in, like, running bodies of water. And it is something that can potentially go ahead and survive in warm, moist, stagnant environments for prolonged period of time for up to months. That being said, depending on what part of the United States and the world that you live in, it is something that here in the United States we'll typically see seems to be more prevalent between the months of July and November. And so it is something that is transmitted through a, what we would call an oral route. So typically, if the dogs go ahead and sift the water or drink some of that standing water, then that would be something that would go ahead and have either some urine or either some of the organisms from the. Of leptospirosis. And that would be something. A way that the dogs, most dogs get this particular organism. I say dogs, cats can get it, too. But it is something that is very uncommon in cats. Cats seem to be more resistant to this particular organism. Now, this is an organism that can cause kidney disease or kidney failure. It can also cause liver failure. The good news is that it is something that is treatable. The only thing that I typically tell people is that it does normally require anywhere between. I say, between five to seven days of hospitalization. And it can get kind of costly because what will end up happening is that the patients will come in not feeling well. And so we, as the doctors, go ahead and start doing a number of different tests to see what's going on. A lot of times we will see the elevated liver values and. Or kidney values, which will lead us to try and then look into other potential causes or causes of why those values are elevated. Meanwhile, they'll be in the hospital on IV fluids and on appropriate antibiotics. Typically, the antibiotic course that we will usually follow will last anywhere between three to six weeks long. The other thing is, the way that it's typically tested for is a couple of different ways. It's going to be through a blood and a urine sample. Now, we can do a test which is usually something that just tells us about the prevalence of or the existence of the disease in the body. The other way that normally we would test for it, and this is an older test, would be what we call leptotitres. Leptotitres. Normally, what we would do is we would check these particular values in the beginning, and then what will end up happening is we will go ahead and check those blood values later, probably a few weeks later, and if those values become elevated, then what we can do is that will give us the indication that, yes, she has been exposed and yes, she does have an active infection. Now, we do not wait to get those tests that, that particular test result back. We assume, based on. Based on all the tests that we've done before, that that she potentially has this particular condition and we would treat her as such until proven otherwise. That being said, this is also a condition which is what we call zoonotic. Zoonotic means that it can be transmitted from animals to humans. And so that does mean that you yourself can potentially develop some liver and or kidney disease. About 90% of people will normally go ahead and just experience more mild symptoms, and about 10% of people will experience those more severe symptoms of, you know, kidney disease and or liver disease. The dogs, about 80 to 90% of them will recover with treatment. Normally, what will end up happening is the. The elevated kidney values will start to decrease after about 10 to 14 days, if not potentially sooner than. And then once the patients are stabilized, we'll check them one month out, three months out, and six months out to make sure that everything is staying the way that it should. Now, that being said, in this particular part of Florida, I've only seen about three cases in 11 years. So it's not something that is very prevalent in this particular area. Also, the leptospirosis vaccine is one of the vaccines, if not the vaccine, that causes the most allergic reactions. And a lot of times readers will mention don't give X vaccine, and typically they're talking about the leptospirosis vaccine because it is a vaccine that does seem to cause allergic reactions. In the past, it was something that was incorporated into what we call the distemper parvo vaccine, and it has now been removed. And so, you know, they still offer it with the distemper parvo vaccine, but now you can give it separately. I will normally only give this particular vaccine if people are planning on taking Their pets to, you know, wooded areas or areas where a lot of other wild animals frequent or even other dogs frequent, and that kind of stuff. And I always tell the clients, you know, the possibility of the vaccine reaction in this particular area of South Florida, most of my clients end up not giving the particular vaccine after we have a conversation. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right or the wrong thing for you. You have to go ahead and talk to your veterinary professional, do your research, and then get together with the veterinarian and make the decision together. Now, today, what we are going to do is we are going to be giving her her first vaccine on her left shoulder. The reason we like to give the vaccines on the left shoulder, at least the leptospirosis vaccine on the left shoulder, is because we want to be able to track where we give the vaccine. So if there is some sort of allergic reaction, we can say this particular vaccine is usually given on this spot. Back in the day, most veterinarians would give the vaccines between shoulder blades because there's a ton of skin there, usually not a whole lot of nerve endings. So it's not as sensitive. And it's very easy to give the injections. What we ended up finding was it ended up causing a lot of inflammation in that particular spot and made the patients more prone to developing tumors, scar tissue, and that kind of stuff. So now we try to spread the vaccines out and identify which vaccines are given in which areas. So if you guys don't like to watch this kind of stuff, then I'm going to go ahead and give the vaccine. You can avert your eyes. For you guys who do want to watch, we're going to go ahead. You can see we're using a very small needle. And so I'm going to go ahead. I'm just going to pick up the skin. I'm going to inject. I'm already in. I'm going to pull back on my plunger to make sure I'm in, feel the vacuum, and then inject it in. I'm going to. And that's pretty much it. I will say that Indy is pretty much an ideal patient. Shout out to mom and dad. She did fantastic with the injection. Not a peep. And, you know, that was pretty much it. The one other thing that normally when we do any sort of vaccination is we will usually check the temperature. If you look over here on the scale without catching some glare, her temperature is 103.1. That's temperature is elevated. Normal for dogs. Goes up to 102.5 I anticipate if you guys notice Indy is panting and has been trying to want to get off the table and that is most likely tied to nerves. So you know mom said that every time she goes to the vet she always has an elevated temperature and she didn't really describe anything going on with Indy. So we anticipate that most likely that is tied to nerves. It is something important. You always have the decision and the right to tell the veterinarian. I'd like to hold off and go ahead and recheck the temperature in a few days and see if the temperature is repeatable and then go from there. If you guys found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe if you have any questions about this particular topic or there are other topics that you want us to discuss, please put it on the comment box below. Otherwise, if you know somebody who needs to see this, please share it with them. Please keep yourself safe and take care. Bye bye. It.
