My latest research project has led me down the path of dog parks and the potential health risk visa vi exposure to viruses.
I am looking for peer reviewed sources published within the last 3-5 years.
Dear Pamela Prudhomme
Good afternoon and thanks for a true interesting question.
In fact, in my point of view, dog parks can have potential negative impacts in what concerns Animal and Public Health. Unfortunately there are not many reports and research performed on this sense, both for Animal and Human sides of the question, but there ought to be!
The philosophy behind these public places for dogs (and their owners) is a little bit like the playgrounds for children and their parents: animals socialize, can make their own physical exercise and their owners have the chance also of socializing and change ideas on their dog health and management with other people who are walking their pet dogs.
The problem is that some dogs are shedding different types of pathogens in their feces (for instance, microscopic worm eggs, cysts or oocysts) which can survive for some weeks/months in the environment, still viable for other animals and/or humans, which can ingest them by accident when ingesting these stages (in humans, after hand contamination while touching grasses or soil). Yes, because some agents infecting dogs can be zoonotic like the roundworms Toxocara canis, Ancylostoma caninum or protozoa like Giardia duodenalis (assemblages A and B) and Cryptosporidium spp., and all of them can be found in dog feces.
Believe me, I do understand the philosophy and importance for these public pet places. But sometimes people owning dogs don't know their animals are infected and worst of all, they don't deworm regularly theirs pets, not mentioning they have behaviors that also may contribute for the environment contamination and animal/human infection, namely not collecting their dog feces.
We have studied this issue in Lisbon area, Portugal, and at least one third of the dog fecal samples collected in 3 different dog parks had at least one parasitic stage, whether egg, oocyst or cyst.
I am sending some papers and posters on this issue and to end my idea, these public pet places are great, as long as people take the animals regularly to their vet and follow a regular parasitological analysis and/or deworming regimen.
Additionaly, municipalities offering this kind of puplic places in urban/suburban areas, should inforce the public information on the resposability of having a pet with a good health status and should inform dog park users to collect dog faeces and the risks concerning Public Health if there are misconduct behaviors like the lack of personal hygiene measures and walking dogs without a leash.
Finally, stray animals (both dogs and cats), but also wild carnivores (like foxes and coyotes) should also be controled in dog parks and other oublic places, because they too may contribute to a great extent for parasite environment contamination and consequentely for the risk of domestic pets and human infection.
Best regards
Luis Carvalho
Thank you so much! Your insight is sure to help me make the case of relevancy with regard to public health and the dirty little secret that dog parks are hiding.
Dear Pamela
Good afternoon. As promised, we have published these days a new paper concerning the issue of dog parks vs. parasite contamination and owner knowledge on the matter. I am uploading it, although it is already available in my RG site.
Although not exhaustive, since we only sampled 3 facilities, all had parasites, one third of samples were positive and it shows a trend that may happen in other similar facilities.
Finally, this should not happen at all, because these animals are supposed to be regularly dewormed, but that is another story, as you may have read in our paper concerning parasite control practices in pet animals.
Best regards and I wish you all a fresh start for the new scholar year.
Luis Carvalho
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Disease
- Infectious Diseases