The dog in question, Excalibur. Yahoo News
The husband of the first Ebola case in Spain, under quarantine himself, claims that Spanish health officials are going to euthanize their dog, Excalibur. -Yahoo News. The Spanish authorities had asked for permission to put down the dog, but did not receive it. Spanish officials claim that mixed breed dogs can carry the virus with no symptoms and transmit the virus to humans. American medical officials say that there isn't any evidence that dogs can transmit the virus. Some dogs in West Africa have tested positive for Ebola, but it is not clear if they were infected. A petition on Change.org gathered 97,000 signatures to save Excalibur .
My Comment:
This is one of those things that is going to make people VERY angry. People love dogs and hearing about them dying is something guaranteed to make them angry. This may cause people to avoid going to the hospital if they have Ebola as well. People love their dogs that much that some people would die to keep them alive. Even if euthanizing the dogs is justified people will still be angry.
As for the question if dogs can transmit Ebola, I have been hearing that rumor for months. I don't know the answer to that question and I don't think anyone knows the answer for that question. I know that apes, monkeys, pigs and fruit bats can all carry the disease but nothing definitive about dogs. If it is true then the Ebola outbreak is worse then we expected. Dogs could be a natural reservoir for the disease that are present in every infected country in large numbers and have regular contact with humans. And like I said above, people love dogs and will be unwilling to let the government euthanize them. Either way this is a question that needs to be answered with 100% certainty now rather then later. And I have no idea why a mixed breed dog would be more susceptible to Ebola then a purebred one.
So is this the right call? I don't know. I love dogs as much as the next guy, maybe more so, but if I knew that a dog had Ebola it would be time to put it down. But we don't know that this dog does have the disease. Just euthanizing the dog without even trying to see if it is infected or not seems pointless. On the other hand it does show that Spain is at least attempting to clamp down on the outbreak. So many other countries, the United States included, have tried and failed to stop the outbreak with half measures. Maybe Spain is just ahead of the curve when it comes to the kind of sacrifices we will need to make to stop the outbreak...
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