Dogs Can’t Wear Respirators

Photo by kenjonbro at Flickr

Note: Today is International Long COVID Awareness Day. You’ve already heard plenty from me about long term sequelae of COVID. You’re aware. Today let’s consider an aspect that doesn’t seem much noticed.

In the UK, the Cinnamon Trust organizes volunteers to take dogs for walkies when their owners are unable to do so. Usually the owner is physically unable to cope with the walk because of a disability or consequences of old age. But for quite a while my wife’s assignment as a volunteer was to take a guide dog for walkies. The guide dog’s person could go for a walk, but whenever she did, the dog had to work. On a regular basis, a volunteer from the Trust took the dog for a walk without her special harness so it would be recreation instead of work.

The guide dog was wonderful. You couldn’t hope for a better friend. She was crazy-happy whenever my wife showed up to walk her. She was a delight on her walks. But whenever we bumped into her and her person in town, the dog was all business. We were just objects she needed to guide her person around. I don’t know many people with such self-discipline and focus. I can’t hold a candle next to her.

The guide dog died recently. We don’t know what the illness was, but it didn’t seem to be COVID. It seemed more like when we’ve lost a dog to cancer. Everyone who knew the dog has been heartbroken.

This made me think about the guide dog’s job.

Before a guide dog can become someone’s irreplaceable sighted companion, teams of people work for years in preparation. People raise carefully chosen puppies, following special guidelines about handling and training. At a particular age the puppies are screened and those deemed likely to succeed go into specific training about how to be a guide dog. Not all of the dogs do well enough to become guide dogs. The ones that do are each matched with a person who needs them.

So much work, so much dedication by both humans and dogs…

What each graduate does as a working guide dog requires them to go out and about with their person everywhere. Their person can choose whether or not to use a nasal spray and wear a high quality face mask (respirator) in public spaces. The guide dog can’t. The guide dog is fully exposed to anything airborne.

That wasn’t a big deal until this pandemic began. Dogs can’t catch measles. Dogs can catch canine distemper, which is caused by another virus in the same family as measles, but they can be vaccinated against it. A guide dog isn’t likely to get too close to dog that has kennel cough while helping their person go to a shop. Dogs can be vaccinated against that too.

But SARS-CoV-2 is another matter. Many animals can catch the virus, including dogs. It can make them very sick. It can kill them. Sometimes pets die from it not long after their humans get COVID. (I looked for respirators for our dogs and couldn’t find any to protect them. This is why we take our dogs to the vet as seldom as possible.)

A COVID vaccine may be available for dogs in the USA. (Zoetis developed such a vaccine for use at zoos and mink farms, then turned its attention to dogs and cats.) You would have to actively pursue it because it is not on the list of recommended vaccines. In the UK, I’m not sure we can get it. Some websites people trust for pet-related information here incorrectly assert that dogs cannot catch SARS-CoV-2, so Britons tend not to be aware of a need for such a vaccine.

A blind person can’t simply buy N95+ or FFP2+ respirator masks for their guide dog. Even if they could, I’m not sure their dog would tolerate it. Have you ever made a dog wear a muzzle? My wife and I have. Let’s just say it wasn’t easy even though the muzzle didn’t affect air flow and we could still offer treats through it for rewards.

Guide dogs are devoted to helping their people. The dogs are completely unprotected from what people are spreading into the air. Look around and you’ll see many people no longer even make token efforts to cover their mouths when they cough.

All those people who dedicate their time and energy to raising and training guide dogs, and all those people relying on guide dogs in their day to day lives, now have to expose the dogs to that.

This is one of the unremarked consequences of a “do whatever you personally choose” attitude about public health. It is one of the unremarked consequences of so many people deciding their convenience matters more than the well-being of the community they live in.

Whether or not we protect against the spread of airborne diseases isn’t just about whether people get sick. It can also be about whether animals get sick. Service animals such as guide dogs are especially at risk. They don’t just go out and about a lot. They go into indoor spaces that are frequented by people. They do essential work. They are unshielded while they do it.

I started out sad about the guide dog my wife used to walk. Then I thought about all of this and felt horrified by what we are doing to all the guide dogs and other service animals, exposing them over and over to something that can sicken and even kill them.

It doesn’t speak well for my species.