Center for Disease Control warns that cuddling puppies is making Americans sick

Center for Disease Control warns that cuddling puppies is making Americans sick

Fewer things make people more happy than cuddling puppies, kittens and all other manner of small, fuzzy critters. Even baby mice are cute before you remember the obscene number of diseases they can carry.

But according to the CDC, cuddling a puppy may be the cause in an infection that has hospitalized 13 people and could affect many more. So far, no deaths have been reported, but the symptoms of this virus are extremely unpleasant.

According to the Center for Disease Control, 55 Americans have contracted Campylobacter and they are struggling to contain the virus. Of those people, 13 people have been hospitalized with nausea, vomiting, severe diarrhea, cramping and fever. Thankfully, there have been no deaths reported in connection to the virus.

The states that have experienced cases of the virus are Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Utah, Wyoming, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Dogs afflicted with the virus can experience the same symptoms as humans, but they aren’t always as obvious.

The CDC is advising pet owners to take special care to clean up after their puppies and always wash their hands thoroughly after handling the animal. Unfortunately, these measure also include refusing kisses from your puppy. It also means keeping them from licking any open wounds that they may have.

There is an open investigation into the origin of the virus and the CDC says that if contracted, you can expect it to run its course without any medical treatment, though antibiotics are used to treat some cases.

You should always take an animal to the vet to make sure they are perfectly healthy and to treat them if they have any sort of issue. Monitor your pets for any behavior that is out of the ordinary and keep their living space as clean as possible in order to prevent the spread of disease.

Animals brighten our lives, make us smile and give us comfort in our times of greatest need. We should take care of them and ourselves, and if that means not cuddling them until after they’ve received a check up and a clean bill of health, I would say that’s worth it. You can’t care for your new pet if you’re laid up in the hospital with some hard-to-pronounce virus, can you?

I want to know where this virus came from and how to prevent it from spreading to other pets. We don’t need something like this bothering us.

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