Do dogs get the flu? Yes, there is a doggie flu version. It was identified decades ago by holistic vets and the “by the book” vets begrudgingly got on board decades later.

For some odd reason I am getting many emails, phone calls and questions with clients asking if their pet can contract the swine flu. Not that I have any first hand technical knowledge, degree in infectious disease but I do have an extensive medical background in dogs and cats. With that said, I have made numerous phone calls and sent out many emails to those who are “supposed” to be the “experts” in this field in relation to dogs and cats of which I will pass on.

I would like to say that I do not give much notice to all the media hype and fear mongering that has been going on the past week. There are over 6 billion people on the planet and there was some doctor on some news station that said your odds are much higher of getting in a car accident on the way home from work or a plane crash than getting the swine flu. Thank GOD, for someone with a brain. What was that line in Men in Black? A person is sane and rational, people are nuts or something like that. So for those that are just curious or those who do not pay much notice to those that are panic stricken here is what I have been told.

First, as with colds the flu is virus based and there are three types of known viruses. One is Type A, Type B and Type C, subtype classifications, based on protein structure and all the other technical medical jargon that common folks do not really understand. In simple form….

Type A can infect animals and people. What type of most common animal? Bird or what was called Avian Flu however along with the bird it has been found in whales and not just wild backyard birds but chickens and ducks as well. This is normally the flu that so many people year round and is spread mostly by humans. Type A has the boat load of subtypes and can be the most deadly. Most susceptible are the very young and old or people with compromised immune systems.

Type B is only found and contracted from human to human contact and not as severe as symptoms as Type A which millions of people a year miss work because of.

Type C is the weakest of the three and is usually passed between humans. The exception being that is has also been found in pigs and dogs.

The dog flu is called Type A H3N8 and the cat flu is called Type A H5N1. A common question is what is up the letters and numbers we all keep hearing about. They refer to the number of proteins on the surface. So H stands for hemagglutinin which basically means it is what clumps the red blood cells together. The N stands for neuraminidase and that would be the enzyme and let us not even go down that road of explanation.

According to the people I have spoken to and or received emails from the only safe and obvious answer is there has yet to be a connection between this flu from Mexico that is going around and dogs and cats. The biggest problem any scientist has is that a virus can mutate and change structure so fast that the scientist’s cannot keep up. Just as with the symptoms, the flu I might have presents different symptoms than the flu you get which will be different from the flu your neighbor gets. There was only one reported swine flu dog death reported (that people are certain of) and that was in the late 1990’s with a dog in Twain or Thailand, I cannot remember which.

Since neither the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Center for Disease Control (CDC) will make a commitment you can rest assured that a vet will not commit either since it is such an unknown. Is it possible? Certainly since you must remember, prior to the 1918 debacle, scientists were convinced that people could not get the flu from animals, the world was flat, the airplane would never work and man would never go to the moon, it is all relative to what is known at the time.

So how can you keep as safe as possible and help keep your pets safe? For over 40 decades I have always followed the holistic approach to health as well as all my pets as most of my clients know. When a few of my dogs had cancer, I flushed the vets idea of chemo and all the allopathic deadly and painful chemicals and when straight to what I know would be safer and not only work but for centuries have been known to work better in most cases. That would be therapeutic grade essential oils. See section on