Anything For Animals

posted by admin on Jun 13

What are the distemper symptoms seen in dogs?

The distemper virus has an incubation period of about 7-21 days before you will even see any distemper symptoms in your pet. Sometimes you don’t even really notice them.

Any distemper symptoms you will see should fall into one of the 3 categories listed below, but there can be a progression though all three stages of the disease, so your pet will show the different distemper symptoms shown in each example:

Mild Distemper:

This is rarely diagnosed, as there is a rapid recovery before you notice there was anything wrong in the first place. It is sometimes seen, by a particularly observant owner, as a period of depression (change in behavior), anorexia (refusal to eat or eating very little) and mild and short lived pyrexia (a raised temperature).

Acute Distemper:

Within 7 days of exposure to the distemper virus, the dog will become depressed, anorexic and pyrexic as above, but for longer and this will usually be much more noticeable than mild distemper. Within 48 hours of the pyrexia, the temperature will return to normal, but may rise again in susceptible dogs such as those with known illnesses including immunosuppression or those with a secondary bacterial infection.

Other noticeable distemper symptoms for the acute form can include:

Tonsillitis or pharyngitis (infections of the area at the back of the mouth) usually with a dry cough

Conjunctivitis (infection of the eye)

Rhinitis (irritated nasal passages), usually with a discharge

Pneumonia (inflammation of the lung tissue)

Vomiting, diarrhoea, dehydration and general loss of body condition

Hyperkeratosis (hardening and thickening) of the nose and foot pads, and increased pain in these areas

Mortality can be high, but is recoverable if the distemper symptoms above are spotted early and treated promptly.

If acute disease develops in a dog that is less than 6 months old, it may permanently damage the enamel on their adult teeth as a result, leaving noticeable damage which is sometimes referred to as ‘distemper rings’.

Nervous Disease Distemper:

Approximately 50% of all dogs with acute distemper go on to develop nervous signs. The type and severity of which vary with each individual animal, as will the symptoms.

In some instances, nervous disease distemper will occur without showing any of the acute symptoms above and some time after the original infection and can have many forms.

Onset of nervous disease distemper symptoms is not fatal, but is not a good sign for the animal in general. It is likely that it will now be affected by it’s symptoms for the rest of it’s life due to the viral effect on the brain and nervous system. Nervous disease distemper symptoms can include:

• Head tilt
• Blindness
• Seizures
• Circling and pacing behavior
• Ataxia - unbalanced walking or gait
• Dysmetria - unequal movements of the limbs
• Hypermetria - a high stepping gait
• Nystagmus - random flicking of the eyeballs
• Chorea (rapid muscle movements) or twitching associated with any group of muscles
• General weakness of the body
• Paresis (muscle weakness)
• Occasional paralysis (loss of function) of the hind-limbs
• Faecal and/or urinal incontinence (loss of control)

There are also cases where the signs of nervous disease are not noticed until years after the initial distemper infection and symptoms. This is only identified in more elderly animals when coordination is lost and behaviour changes are noticed. This is often tagged as ‘Old Dog Encephalitis’ (ODE) and is actually a diagnosable degenerative brain disorder.

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