The rabies got a bit more personal all of a sudden

About a week and a half after the dog was killed, I went outside one evening to break up a fight between two of the puppies who had really latched on to each other and were making quite a racket. I shouted, I smacked their back sides, I even flipped them over a couple of times. No effect. I didn’t want to dump water on them because they were still small and it was night and I didn’t want them to get chilled and end up sick. So, stupidly I whacked them a bit closer to the head with my hand. It broke up the fight but one of them bit my finger. The holes weren’t big because the puppies are still small but their teeth are sharp – it felt like it went all the way to the bone!

It bled a lot, dripping all over the floor on my way to the bathroon to wash it. That is good they say, for cleaning out a wound. I washed it well with soap and plenty of water. Somebody had some betadine so I applied that. Coincidentally, a teenager in the house had been bit by the neighbor’s dog earlier in the day. That dog probably isn’t rabid, he just likes to bite. When the neighbor got home she came over and brought some grated up pulp from a particular tree that they say draws out poisons. So they packed the teenager’s wound and my finger with it. It was cool and soothing but after an hour I took it off and reapplied betadine. My wound wasn’t particularly painful but of course we are all aware that the mother was recently killed for presumed rabies.

From what I have gathered, the incubation for rabies in dogs is usually 3-6 weeks but can be as long as 6 months. The virus works its way up the nerves into the brain and when it gets to the brain it infects the saliva glands and the saliva is what carries the infection to other animals or people. That is also when the symptoms start. So apparently the animal is not contagious until about the time the symptoms start or a couple days earlier. That is why they say to observe the animal 10 days. If it was coming down with the disease, it will be showing definite symptoms in that time. If the dog is not sick within 10 days, then it was not infectious at the time of the bite – even though presumably the animal might still come down with the disease at a later date.

To comfort (?!) me they told me all about a 10-year old boy in the next village who had died of rabies a couple years ago. He got it from a puppy that they didn’t know had rabies. (Puppies die from all sorts of things.) They told me about a 20 year old girl from another village who had also died of rabies of unclear origen. So rabies is definitely endemic in the area. In fact, one of these puppies was killed in the night presumably by a rabid dog. Fortunately for me, that puppy was not the one that bit me.

The government has intermittent campaigns to vaccinate dogs and there are antirabies shots for those bitten, although with the chronic electricity problems in the area one wonders how viable the vaccine is. After arriving back in the third of my worlds a few days ago I heard that rabies is also an ongoing problem here though they seem to have made more progress in getting animals vaccinated routinely. They also vaccinate water buffalo, cattle and horses. I told the vet about my adventure with the puppies and he confirmed what I had found out about incubation, etc. He also suggested that I considered getting vaccinated against rabies since I am often in a high-risk area. He himself gets an annual booster. He also advised me that the next time I want to break up a dog fight to just use water!

Anyway, I am now past the 10-days and the puppies are still healthy.