Dog Flu Story: Learning It Was a Totally Different Strain

This wasn’t your mom’s dog flu. It’s amazing how quickly scientists figured out this wasn’t the same dog flu strain that was discovered back in 2004, and has been periodically popping up all around the country (called H3M8).

Subsequent testing, carried out with the New York State Animal Diagnostic Laboratory at Cornell University and the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, identified the outbreak as being caused by a virus closely related to an Asian strain of canine influenza virus A. This strain has been in wide circulation in Chinese and South Korean dog populations since at least 2006, called H3N2. No one knows how this strain arrived in the U.S., but here it is.

From there, quickly a vaccine was created.