Published: July 21, 2008 05:43 pm      

Murray family exposed to rabies

By Mark Millican

markmillican@daltoncitizen.com



Because they accepted the gift of a puppy from a family in the Cherry Log community between Ellijay and Blue Ridge, a Chatsworth family is now receiving shots for rabies.

Health officials said the dog seemed fine when the family, which lives in the Gladden Middle School area, brought it home from Gilmer County, where the residents there owned the puppy, its litter mate and its mother and father. None of the dogs showed symptoms for rabies.

But a few days later, the pup did begin to exhibit rabies symptoms and bit the mother of the family. The entire family began receiving treatments immediately.

“It’s still in the investigative phase to see if (the rabies) came from a raccoon or fox, or a coyote or a bat,” said Jason Osgatharpe, manager of the Murray County Environmental Health Department. “It’s probably one of the bigger animals, because that’s usually the case when a dog is infected.”

Osgatharpe noted that the Cherry Log area has had an “outbreak” of rabies in the last year. The infected puppy was bitten by a raccoon two weeks ago there, but the raccoon was tested for rabies twice and each test came back negative.

“The amount of time that it usually takes is a 30-day incubation period for the virus to appear,” he said. “So for the puppy to develop rabies in the middle of that incubation period would have been very strange anyway. It may have been a different raccoon.”

“It was possible that the rabies virus was in the puppy’s saliva before the symptoms appeared,” said Jennifer Moorer, public information officer with the North Georgia Health District. “Therefore, the original owners in Gilmer County were contacted, as well, and there is a current investigation under way. The investigation includes testing to see which particular type of rabies virus variant was involved.”

The adult dogs of the Cherry Log residents are current on their rabies vaccinations, so they only needed a booster shot and a 45-day at-home quarantine, Moorer added.

Ray King, the district director of environmental health for the health district, said the entire family took the injections “to be safe.”

“There are two different types of treatments,” he said. “The first shot is an immune globulin for short-term immunity. They also take the first vaccine on day zero, which is the first day. They take a series of shots on days three, seven, 14 and 28 — five (vaccine) shots in all.”

King said public health officials had talked to the neighbors to be sure the puppy hadn’t been seen outside around people or other dogs, and all indications were it had not.

“This is the first rabid animal we’ve had in several years in Murray County,” Osgatharpe said, “and this one is not from here. There is no cause for alarm.”

Moorer added, “The litter mate was given to a family in Johnson County and that family has been contacted. Their puppy has not yet exhibited rabies symptoms; however, it is being monitored by that county’s environmental health department under state-mandated quarantine guidelines.

For more information about rabies and its prevention, call the Environmental Health Department in Murray County at (706) 695-0266, extension 371, or in Whitfield County at (706) 272-2005. General information about rabies can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site at www.cdc.org.