What are Zoonoses

Zoonozes are infection diseases that can pass from dogs and cats to people. Many bacteria and viruses that infect pets can also cause disease in people. These bacteria or viruses can be passed on in a number of different ways. Contact with your pet itself is one way that disease is spread, but other ways include contact with urine, faces, or respiratory secretions of an infected animal, or contact with other items in the animal’s environment. Disease can also be spread through scratches or bites by an infected pet, or by insects (such as the Lyme-disease tick) that carry the infection from animal to human.

Many known zoonotic diseases are passed from wild animals to pets and then to people. Exposure to pets is steadily increasing as the number of cats and dogs increases in the U.S, Canada and other countries. That is why zoonozes present an ongoing public health concern.

The number of different types of animals kept as pets is also increasing. Exotic pets such as prairie dogs have become popular in many parts of the world. Such animals have brought diseases out of the wild and into human homes. For example, in 2003 on outbreak of monkeypox (a rare viral disease) occurred in people who were exposed to the virus by recently purchased prairie dogs. It was later determined that the prairie dogs likely were exposed to the virus when they came into contact with another exotic species, the Gambian rat, at...