Expert: Any Dog Can Bite, Even the Calmest
After an incident in Carnikava in which dogs bit kindergarten children, a veterinary specialist reminds pet owners to keep rabies vaccinations up to date. The dogs involved had not been revaccinated on time.
Latvian society was alarmed by an incident in Carnikava, where unsupervised dogs left their enclosure and bit children from a kindergarten group who happened to be on their path. A similar misfortune could occur anywhere in Latvia.
Alma Plivča, a lecturer at the Preclinical Institute of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies and a master of biological sciences, explains how people can protect themselves and those around them.
Vaccination is an obligation
She reminds owners that the Veterinary Medicine Law requires an animal's owner or keeper to ensure preventive rabies vaccination of dogs, cats and domestic ferrets at the age of three months. Regular revaccination, meaning repeat vaccination, must follow later.
According to the specialist, some residents treat this requirement lightly. This is also shown by the fact that the dogs involved in the Carnikava incident had not been revaccinated against rabies on time.
An incurable disease
Plivča stresses that rabies is a very dangerous, incurable infectious disease that causes the death of a person or an animal. Latvia is currently a rabies-free country, but in the lecturer's view, it is society's responsibility to take care that it remains so.
She points out that vaccination is one way people can protect both themselves and others, since an owner's responsibility covers not only supervising a pet but also meeting health requirements.
