Researchers' Treat for Dogs—A Better Flu Vaccine

If Fido doesn’t want to fetch or eat, if he’s sneezing or coughing or has a fever, he might have the flu. Like humans, birds, pigs and horses, dogs can catch the influenza virus and quickly spread it to other dogs.

The first canine influenza vaccine in the U.S. was , about five years after the first dog-specific strain was identified in and then thousands of dogs of all types in several states. The H3N8 canine influenza virus evolved from an equine strain that had been infecting horses since the 1960s, says Cynda Crawford, a veterinarian and clinical assistant professor at the University of Florida who helped discover it. Another strain, the H3N2 canine influenza virus—which was adapted from an avian influenza and had been circulating in dogs in China, Korea and Thailand—appeared in Chicago in March 2015.