TRUMBULL COUNTY Health officials: Neighbors mishandled dog situation

The dog was later found not to carry rabies.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
BROOKFIELD -- Within six days of biting an 11-year-old boy on the wrist, a dog that lived in a garage was shot by neighbors, buried, dug up and decapitated with an ax.
In the process, at least two people that participated in the backyard beheading were potentially exposed to rabies, Trumbull County health officials said.
The residents were trying to remove the animal's head for testing in what appears to be a textbook case in how not to handle an apparently rabid animal.
"They should at least get some advice from a veterinarian who deals with this on a day-to-day basis, and not just blow the dog's head off," said health commissioner Dr. James Enyeart.
Dogs suspected of carrying rabies are usually quarantined for 10 days, rather than killed. Contact with the animals' saliva or brain matter is sufficient to spread the disease. The brain tissue can be tested to see if an animal was rabid, but a shallow grave is not the ideal place to store samples, officials said.
"Fortunately, the weather was cool," said Frank Migliozzi, director of the health department's division of environmental health.
Before lab results confirmed that the dog wasn't carrying the deadly disease, the health department had identified 26 people in the neighborhood who could have been exposed. Most of the exposure had taken place before the dog was killed, officials said.
Shots
If testing the dog's carcass hadn't been possible, people who had been exposed would have been counseled to undergo a series of five shots costing about $2,000.
There is no test for rabies exposure. Once symptoms appear, it is too late to reverse the course of the fatal disease, said Mary Ellen Pilgrim, who runs the health department's rabies program.
Earlier this month, Sharon Regional Medical Center informed the Trumbull County Health Department that an 11 year-old from Amy-Boyle Road N.E. was being treated for a dog bite to his wrist.
Pilgrim said the boy was bit by the stray dog after he ran over to see the stray and his dog fighting.
She said she talked to the family about tracking down the dog, which was known to many people in the neighborhood.
In the meantime, neighbors who had been keeping the animal in their garage decided to kill it because it appeared to be sick, Pilgrim said.
"It was coincidence," she said.
According to Trumbull County 911 records, the boy's mother called dispatchers at 4:07 p.m. June 16, complaining that her son had been bitten by a dog that morning. She told the dispatcher that the animal had already been shot and buried, and that she was having trouble getting an answer from the health department or dog warden if the dog's carcass could still be tested.
She could not be reached to comment.
Pilgrim said the family who killed the dog talked to a veterinarian about preparing the dog's carcass for testing.
Contacted vet
"They contacted a veterinarian and there was a charge for it," she said. "For whatever reason, they chose not to do that and they decapitated it themselves."
She said they did it the weekend of June 16, and the dog's head was shipped off for testing the following week. The clean result came back June 25.