This is an ALERT for ALL our precious dogs....

[Yorkiemom1]

Just when you thought you had a firm handle on just about every threat good old Mother Nature in your yard throws at you......

".......Dogs were dying in their kennels on a ranch in Brooks County, and no one knew why.

"We had a half-dozen dogs - Labs, pointers - die: They'd just fall over," Berdon Lawrence said. "Nobody knew what was going on."

Lawrence, a Houston businessman, recalled one dog in particular that made him determined to discover what was happening to the working canines housed on his South Texas ranch. On a quail hunt, a seemingly perfectly healthy pointer was zigzagging through the brush.

"The pointer was working quail and just fell over, dead," Lawrence said. "It didn't make any sense."

Concerned that something associated with the kennel was causing the sudden deaths, Lawrence sent one of the deceased dogs to Texas A&M Veterinary Diagnostic Lab for a necropsy. The results stunned him.

"The diagnosis came back as a heart attack caused by Chagas disease," he said. "I said, 'What's Chagas disease?' I'd never heard of it."

Neither have most Texans.

A growing problem

They should. And they almost certainly will. The parasite-caused disease, which in many cases causes fatal, heart-related problems, potentially is a serious threat to human health in Texas. It already is a threat to the state's canine population.

"We know we have Chagas disease in Texas, and Texas is emerging as a hot spot," said Dr. Sarah Hamer, assistant professor and associate wildlife biologist with Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "There is a growing crisis of canine Chagas in Texas."

Hamer was among speakers at a day-long "Chagas Disease in Texas" symposium held Tuesday in Kingsville and hosted by the South Texas Private Property Rights Association and Texas A&M-Kingsville's Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute.

While there are no hard data on the number of dogs in Texas that are infected with the parasite causing Chagas disease or the number that die from its effects, anecdotal evidence indicates hundreds and probably thousands of Texas dogs die from its effects each year.

"It is a significant problem," Dr. Glen Wilkinson, a veterinarian in Premont in Jim Wells County and one of the attendees at the Kingsville gathering, said, noting he has seen "over a hundred dogs in the past couple of years" that have tested positive for the protozoan parasite that causes Chagas disease.

Chagas disease is hardly an unknown malady. The disease long has been a major human health issue in Mexico, Central and South America, where it is estimated to infect as many as 8 million people and annually cause as many 25,000 human deaths.

The disease is caused by a protozoa, Trypanosoma cruzi, that, once in a mammalian host, circulates in the blood until it finds a smooth muscle tissue - usually in the heart - where it takes up residence and begins damaging that tissue. Often, the first clinical signs of the disease in dogs is sudden death from heart failure.

There are currently no vaccines that prevent the disease, treatments are invariably minimally effective and there is no cure for Chagas disease.

The protozoa are transmitted to the host by insects - specifically those of the genus Triatoma. Commonly called "kissing bugs," the winged insects have a flat, pear-shaped body and an elongated, cone-shaped head with a prominent "beak." That beak is used to puncture skin and gorge on blood from a mammal.

Higher risk at night

Kissing bugs invariably do their feeding at night, emerging from brush piles, cracks, crevasses, thick grasses and similar habitat. They crawl onto their victims, often drawn by the carbon dioxide the mammal exhales, and take a bite. This bite often occurs near the victim's mouth - thus the name "kissing bug."

The protozoan parasite carried by the insect isn't injected during the bite but is deposited in feces typically loosed after the blood meal. The victim typically scratches the bite, smearing the feces into the wound or otherwise introducing it to the body.

If dogs are bitten by a kissing bug in Texas, odds are high that bug carries the parasite causing Chagas disease. And those bugs are found in much of Texas. Seven species of Triatoma have been identified across the state, with the largest numbers in southern and central Texas.

"In every place we have got the insects, we have found positives," Dr. Teresa Feria, assistant professor in the biology department of University of Texas-Pan American, told symposium attendees.

The problem is not confined to South Texas. Half of the kissing bugs collected in Kerr County of Central Texas tested positive for the parasite.

With no preventative vaccine and no effective treatment for Chagas disease, the best practice for dog owners is to reduce chances their dogs will encounter a kissing bug.

Owners of dogs kept in kennels should install screening around the runs to help prevent the insects from having an unimpeded path to a sleeping dog, Dr. Greta Schuster, Texas A&M-Kingsville professor of integrated pest management, said at the Chagas symposium.

These are the tactics Berdon Lawrence pursued on his South Texas ranch. They installed screens around the chain-link fence kennels. They cleared vegetation from around the kennel and regularly applied insecticide around the peri-meter.

The result was positive. Since making those changes several years ago, the ranch has lost only one dog to Chagas disease, said Lawrence.

"Chagas disease is a problem," Lawrence said. "The good news is, if you know about it, you can do something about it.".........

[yorkiemini]

Oh dear! Thanks for the heads up! More and more it seems I am not letting my dog out after the sun goes down. She protests, but I am holding strong - wo now there is another reason other than Mosquitos .

[katy-yorkie]

Yorkiemom1, you are correct, one more thing to keep us on our toes...hopefully we can keep our pups safe.

[capt_noonie]

Omg scary!

[Lil Sis]

I saw this on my face book... I think Linda said she had a rescue that had a heart condition due to this bug.

Scary

[Wylie's Mom]

Wow, this scares me . Wonder if we have these bugs in AZ...?

[BabyGirl Rosie]

Omg how scary. Another worry for us.

[Lovetodream88]

Yikes that's scary

[ladyjane]

Originally Posted by Lil Sis

I saw this on my face book... I think Linda said she had a rescue that had a heart condition due to this bug.

Scary

We do...his name is Chewie. You can read about him here:

Adoptable Pups

He is an amazing little one. He came to us in 2012 and we never expected him to live this long.

[Lilah Charm]

Originally Posted by Lovetodream88

Yikes that's scary

That about says it for humans and dogs alike :shudder:

[Verbena]

Thank you for sharing . . I posted this on my fb

[yorkietalkjilly]

I think I can remember when the news did a kind of cutesy piece on an influx of
"kissing bugs" invading in hoards somewhere a few years back and everybody being irritated that the kissing bugs weren't so sweet but a real nuisance but I don't think they ever spoke a word about the true danger of a heart condition associated with them!!! Thanks for the warning - another thing we need to know - and far more informative than that news show.

[JuanRamos]

The thing is, this disease can't really affect dogs with a good immune system. The same applies to humans. This is why even in my country cases like this are so rare. The chances of a bug "kissing" you and excreting on the wound caused by its bite are so slim that most of the time the only ones that get affected, be it humans or dogs, are those that live in pretty poor conditions. This is why strays and homeless people are the number one victims of this disease, and if anything is of great importance for both healthy humans and animals to never ever approach poop of any kind, since the ones that get this disease can transmit it that way.

If you have a sick puppy, or you yourself are dealing with a condition that weakens your immune system, then it is of utmost importance to make sure that these bugs don't find your home as an attractive area to look for food.

[JuanRamos]

It can also be transmitted through a blood transfusion, which is why you will always be tested for it before being able to donate blood. At least that's how it is where I live, despite Chagas Disease being pretty rare in Sonora (We are right under Arizona, in case you didn't know). From what I've seen, Chagas is a lot more common in zones with forests/jungles. Places with lots of vegetation (tall grass) are usually favored by the kissing bugs, so if you live in a desertic area like I do, chances are that you will never come across them.

What worries me the most is that such testing might not be done for dogs. If there are more deviants like that vet that took advantage of sick pups to sell their blood, then chances are that most dogs could get this dangerous disease through a blood tranfusion.

[JuanRamos]

Only 30 to 40% of the victims develop the chronic symptoms (the ones that lead to heart failure). Considering how most of them are people in extreme poverty, it shows that you gotta have really bad health in order for the virus to cause real damage to your organs (the acute symptoms should be easy to detect, specially the chagoma that forms on the place where you or your pet got bitten). If anything the acute symptoms are dangerous for babies and puppies, since the diarrhea and vomiting could lead to them getting dehydrated.