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Treatment

The major goal of therapy is to eradicate the causative organism from the dog, but this may be difficult to achieve in all animals. Antibiotic treatment is employed to treat these patients, but treatment is not always 100 percent effective. Breeding a dog that has or has had brucellosis is not recommended under any circumstance. For this reason, your veterinarian will be insistent on spaying or neutering your dog to prevent any chance of contamination.

In kenneled situations, euthanasia is often recommended.

Brucellosis has the potential for being spread zoonotically to humans. For this reason, people who have autoimmune disorders, or who are susceptible to infection should not keep a dog that is infected with brucellosis.

Living and Management

This disease can be difficult to treat, so you must adhere to the recommendations and guidelines given to you by your veterinarian. After the initial treatment, some tests may need to be conducted again every month for three months in order to evaluate progress. If your dog is not responding well to the treatment, depending on the severity of your dog's condition, your veterinarian will recommend re-treatment, neutering, or euthanasia.

Regular monitoring of the disease status in kennels is important, and quarantine measures, along with testing, should be conducted before introduction of new animals to the kennel.

If you dog is, or has been infected, do not sell it or give it to anyone else and do not breed your dog under any circumstance. Animals that have been diagnosed with brucellosis are considered positive for this disease for the rest of their lives; periodic treatment with antibiotics to reduce the number of bacteria in the body is the only option for minimizing symptoms and for shedding of causative organisms.

Prevention

All intact male and female dogs should be tested for Brucella canis every three to six months, and all breeding dogs should be tested before breeding takes place.