Vital Animal News: January 25, 2026
Rabies in Chicago; Light spectrum, animals and you; Goats happily do weed control, Dogs sniff out canine cancer, Farmers who farm outside the box, and More
The Odd Rabies Case in ChiTown
Dairy Cows Vote Yellow
Noxious Weed Law? Baaaaa-aaaa!
Dogs on Dogs for Cancer Dx
Farmers I Love
Along the Natural Path
Rabies Gets Around…
By now, you’ve likely heard about this strange case of rabies in a young Chicago dog.
The case made the news, as Chicago hadn’t had a rabid dog reported since 1964.
Here’s the Cook County report on it from late December.
And a few more details from this local newspaper.
The Odd Part
The history is a bit concerning to some, and likely to call vaccination efficacy into question.
To start, the pup originated in Georgia, became part of a rescue org in Florida, and was sent to Chicago to be adopted in May 2025. A traveling rescue, which sounds pretty typical these days. I guess it’s a supply/demand issue, so rescue animals relocate to increase their chances of finding a home.
I’ve had concerns, alongside the US ag import folks, when that relocation goes international, with animals coming from countries with lax rabies control, but this was apparently not at play here.
Once in the Chicago placement group, after he reached the appropriate age, the dog was vaccinated against rabies in June 2025, but “always had behavioral issues.”
This dog bit a human on December 11, and went into a 10 day quarantine to ensure this wasn’t a bite due to developing rabies.
Well, that behavior started looking more dangerous (like the furious form of rabies) so…
The dog was euthanized on December 18, 2025 due to the dog’s behavior, and rabies was confirmed through laboratory testing on December 19, 2025. The dog tested positive for rabies by direct fluorescent antibody testing, and a repeat test was also positive.”
A Mistaken Dx?
Someone asked if it was possible the positive test was a result of having been vaccinated, so let’s get some clarity on this.
To date, the only authoritative test for the rabies virus is a brain exam, employing the direct fluorescent antibody test.
It uses fluorescein‑labeled anti‑rabies antibodies to bind rabies virus antigen in brain smears. Under the microscope, a positive test shows as apple‑green fluorescence in infected tissue. This demonstrates rabies viral antigen directly.
A vaccinated dog would not have rabies antigen in his brain, only antibodies in the blood, so there’s no chance of confusion.
This has long been the gold standard test to tell if an animal had rabies or did not.
And it can only be run on brain tissue, so vets and animal control folks know they have to be sure the brain is intact in a euthanized animal, and the head is rushed to a testing facility on ice.
But: Vaccinated?
There are two words operant in this question of why a vaccinated dog got rabies.
Vaccination: the act of installing a vaccine, usually by injection, but some vaccines are intranasal.
Immunization: the response by the vaccinated animal to mount an immune response, which is the ultimate goal of vaccination.
Vaccination doesn’t guarantee immunization.
Chief reasons include:
Vaccinated too young. Not the case in this dog, but an all too common practice of breeders. Podcast Ep 11: Breeders: Please STOP Doing This!
Vaccine problems.
The USDA is testing the vaccine lot to see if there are problems there.
There’s also vaccine handling, like poor refrigeration.
That’s more critical in MLV (modified live vaccines) than the usual killed rabies vaccines, all we’ve had available for the decades of rabies control efforts to date.
So, even sloppy handling of the vaccine seems a long shot in this case.
[An aside: as of this date, the newer “NXT” RNA rabies vaccine is not available to US vets due to “contractual obligations” from Merck. It has rolled out in Canada, so my Canadian readers will want to read my earlier posts on why I’d recommend avoiding this shot:
Immunization Fail
My best guess is this dog lived a life of chronic stress, albeit a short one.
Not much history here except the abandonment, common to many orphans.
Early life nourishment may well have been lacking as well.
But also, there’s the never normal behavior, indicating perhaps an always on edge state of survival.
That chronic stress depresses the immune system, true in all species.
So, while he was vaccinated against rabies, perhaps that immune suppression didn’t allow the hoped for immunization to take place.
Still Unknowns + The Exposed
Up to this point, the source of the rabies in this dog is unclear, as is the type (raccoon, skunk, bat variants, for example). Chicago exposure to the virus has been ruled out. And the CDC is in the midst of testing, which can be a prolonged effort.
Littermates of this pup were given booster vaccines and 45 day home quarantines but none have displayed signs of rabies.
And 13 people with direct exposure are undergoing treatment to be sure they’re not going to develop the disease.
As we get more answers, I’ll convey them, but for now, this appears to be a fluke. Not the parasite, but a turn of phrase.
Still a rarity in domestic animals, rabies makes the news periodically when people are involved.
Light and Animal Health
I’m guessing you know light affects us all, right?
Popular press warns us regularly to turn off our devices before bed, so we’re not bathed in its blue light frequencies that screw with our melatonin and sleep quality.
We’ve learned how important it is to get exposure to early morning sunlight, which apparently sets us up for a better day, circadian wise, than if we’re stuck indoors and miss that input.
But there’s also some more serious concerns for us, and some encouraging news coming from animal research (moooo!) that you may be interested in.
On the Order of Asbestos? Oh Oh.
Our indoor lighting took a hit some years back when humans discovered they could make light with LED sources that used way less energy than the old incandescent bulbs we all grew up with.
Those new bulbs are ubiquitous and often skew towards the blue end of the spectrum.
Remember ROY G BIV? Colors of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
That’s a mnemonic device I doubt I’ll ever forget, though the planetary one has long since slipped away. No matter, no plans to visit Mars or any other celestial body for this earthling.
Here’s a recent concern, made eminently clear by a soft spoken, easy listening researcher who knows his light:
Mitochondria?
The energy generators of our cells. So, when the good doctor is saying they were falling in performance under blue light, you can read that as a negative.
When you listen to these nerds talk light, keep in mind “short wavelength” refers to the UV part of the spectrum (ultraviolet is shorter than visible violet, for example) and “long length” is the opposite: the reds and infrared, the rays you can feel warming you.
One of the cool findings that stuck with me from Dr. Jeffery: they could point a beam of infrared light on a person’s back and find it “bounced all around the body!!”
Oh, one more, especially for those of us realizing we are insulin resistant: the blood glucose spike after eating is tempered after IR exposure! Cool!
Practical Fixes
I’m upgrading my “tube lights” (as they’re called here in India) so that, at least in the hours before bedtime, I’ll be getting more light from the ROY side of the equation (better for melatonin, mitochondria, and solid sleep).
I’m seeing a couple options for one bulb to do two jobs: bright and white when it’s work time and dimmer and more yellow “relaxing” mode before bed. I’m in!
The B in BIV is what computers and smart phones and tablets put out, and that wavelength (along with brightness) disturb sleep.
Here’s the nerd version: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6751071/
And the TL;DR version: “Bottom line: Short‑wavelength (“blue”) evening light is causally linked to melatonin suppression and delayed sleep; warmer, dimmer light mitigates it, with effects sized by dose, timing, spectrum, and individual sensitivity.”
The Cows Vote Yellow
Well, the dairy cows would like to add their 2¢ (2 gallons?).
And this transcends the red vs blue pigeon holes the main stream media would like to use to divide us.
The milk cows are always looked to as economic units, at least by the big dairies, while my experience with the smaller Wisconsin herds included the “family” view, what with lineages well known along with names the whole family called them by.
Here’s an interesting study out of China, and the title gives you the results: Yellow light improves milk quality, antioxidant capacity, immunity, and reproductive ability in dairy cows by elevating endogenous melatonin.”
In a nutshell, the researchers grouped cows in different overnight light environments and measured those variables that relate to health (both cow health and milk drinker health).
The two week experiment tested darkness, yellow light, and red light on three groups from the same herd.
And as the title of the paper makes clear, the results were all better with the group who got yellow light through the night:
Milk: more of it, more protein in it
Better milk quality (lower cell counts)
Cow immunity up ticked measurably
They had more antioxidant capacity in those big bods
The girls returned to heat (estrus) sooner and their pregnancy rates were improved
And the findings all correlated with the melatonin levels they measured in the milk.
Whatcha Gonna Do?
So, some take aways from all this light conversation.
Get out in the morning sunlight, daily. Even if it’s cloudy, it counts.
As the day wraps up and bedtime draws nigh, turn off the computer, phone, tablet and TV. Even before the off time, dial down the brightness. That’ll help you get less of the blue meanies that are out to screw with your melatonin levels.
Ideally, that off period is 1-2 hours before you crawl into the covers. I know, I know…
Make your evening indoor lighting “warm” and dimmer than your work day study lighting.
Here’s how warm/cool is measured in light bulbs:
“Kelvin on light bulbs indicates the color temperature of the light.
It’s a measure of how “warm” or “cool” the light looks.
Lower numbers (around 2200–3000K) appear warm/amber like candlelight or old incandescent.
Mid-range (3500–4100K) is neutral/bright white.
Higher numbers (5000–6500K) look cool/daylight/blueish, like noon sun or overcast daylight.
It doesn’t measure brightness—that’s lumens—and it’s not about heat output.”
I bought a warm yellowish halogen bulb for a screw in replacement of a too cool white LED and I’m waiting on an install of tube light today with two options: bright/more blue/cool for daytime work and dimmer/more red/warm light for the wind down before bed.
I’m told incandescents are “outlawed?” but there are a huge variety of options on the market now to get your Goldilocks Lighting “just right.”
And don’t forget Bossie’s vote…
Goats Control Those Noxious Weeds
I somehow made a fortuitous stumble on the internet, landing on this cool (free) series Women of the Earth.
This particular episode caught my eye, probably because I’d been a goat herder in Hawaii and Texas and milked for our family back in the day.
Did you know several states have laws in place that compel land owners to control noxious weeds?
True, and luckily, they don’t care how you do that control, so this rancher decided she didn’t want to poison the weeds, ruining her soil microbial diversity and putting her animals and family at risk.
Her brilliant answer to Montana’s law?
Rotational grazing of a rather large herd of goats!
She even “rents out” her grazers for neighboring land owners who see the wisdom of this approach.
This is a 15 minute treat of a video showing her and her herd on their beautiful land that she’s chosen to steward wisely.
Enjoy.
Dogs Sniffing Out Cancer
You may have known dogs can detect cancer in people with their exquisitely sensitive noses, but now they’ve upped their detection game another notch.
They are now finding a specific kind of cancer (hemangiosarcoma) in their own species!
In my homeopathic practice years, HSA was perhaps the most common form of cancer in dogs. I saw and treated many cases.
And, as with every disease, the earlier you come upon a cancer, the better the chances you’ll be able to turn things around.
This particular one often creeps up stealthily, most often landing in the spleen where the tumor grows to significant size before symptoms appear.
As it’s a malignancy of the blood vessels, it wasn’t until those vessels started leaking that the dog showed symptoms.
And because the bleeding was in the abdomen, it often wasn’t caught until there’d been significant blood loss, enough to cause weakness or collapse.
Then, on presentation to the vet, pale gums and anemia were discovered on a simple blood test and imaging revealed the tumor.
As with humans, the usual treatments are pretty useless. Removing the spleen is common, and chemo is suggested for those who wanted to go further.
Survival times, even with all of the above could be weeks to months, depending on how advanced the condition was.
How Do the Sniffers Find This?
The group at Penn Vet Working Dog Center grabbed blood samples from dogs diagnosed with HSA and presented those samples against two controls (healthy and other diseases) to the tester dogs.
The method is both high tech and dog simple: Stay on point if you find one, Sadie.
“We used olfactometers, which are very high-tech—they actually have a little infrared laser beam going across the top,” says Wilson. “When that beam is broken, it will register that the dog is interrogating the sample. And if they then stay in that beam for long enough—and it’s the correct sample—they’ll hear a tone, and they’ll know to come and get their treat.”
Those noses know. Depending on the substance they’re tested on, trained dogs can detect odor concentrations roughly a thousand to a million times lower than humans can—sometimes even more.
Yet another demonstration of dogs helping humans (and their fellow dogs).
Workers of The Earth
You may have noticed I’ve got a soft spot for the farmers of the world. I was lucky to have worked with some fine ones during my early years as a dairy vet in Wisconsin.
In the course of helping their cows get pregnant, deliver their calves, beat mastitis and pneumonia and “twisted stomachs,” I’d chat with them about their crops, their families, and the weather (not a light topic when your corn isn’t in yet because the fields are too wet or your hay crop, now cut and drying, might get soaked instead).
My favorite farmers were the ones who were thinking outside the box in comparison to the Big Ag boys who were dumping chemicals and mono cropping.
The brothers Feutz, for example, were early adopters, making serious compost rows from their herd’s daily waste.
And men like Stuart Veldhuizen who had quit conventional dairying when he couldn’t make the numbers work, but discovered a better way and re-entered it by selling raw milk and amazing cheese direct to consumers.
Yesterday, I watched an interview with one of my heroes, Joel Salatin, who encapsulates that philosophy that farming works when you get things in balance and control your local market instead of depending on commodity prices.
I’m inspired to share him here and follow with a smattering of other voices on Substack who work the land in accordance with natural laws.
Brett Gallagher farms in Prague these days, starting from scratch on a piece of undeveloped land and bringing amazing food to his locale and growing family. Calling himself the Mad Farmer, you’ll come to realize that’s high praise in disguise, and we’d all do well to be a bit more mad in how we approach this world and make a go of it.
Then there’s Eli, who realized farm land could be purchased for younger folks to get their start with. She’s got a great Substack outlining how she’s in the thick of that worthy movement in a can’t put em down series she calls About the Farm.
And how about a different perspective on weeds, a resource I’ve barely tapped into yet, here at weedom (“rhymes with…”)
whose author says,
Weedom will bring together people who love to learn and share herbal knowledge. There’s something for everyone: botany, chemistry, physiology, pharmacology, tradition, energetics, with a helping of woo, since all are legitimately involved in the application of plant medicine and nutrition.
If you’re writing about regen ag or natural farming and I missed you, my apologies and let’s hear from (or about) you in the comments!
And hey: get out there and get your hands in the dirt!
Along the Natural Path
Hello, Winter? Are you there? A word, if you will.
I may be guilty of acting kinda disgusted and a bit down with those sunless days you served up a couple weeks back, but hey, I didn’t mean for you to leave, you know? Heh heh.
I mean, it’s still January, for God’s sake, and it’s seriously WAY too soon to warm up. Sure, the sun’s great, we love it, and shedding a layer of wooly undergarments, we can deal with that.
But, this is India, and well, you’re making us a bit nervous here, you know? Sure, you brought a couple of bitterly cold days early month but at least we could don more clothes and pull our hats down further over our ears, but 76º highs in the afternoons now?
Makes us think you’re giving up on us! And damn, we can only take off so many clothes in the Summer, and your counterpart season just goes on and on. We LIKE YOU. We NEED YOU. Stick around a while, will you?
In truth, at least in No. India, we celebrate Spring a bit earlier than you in the West. Basant Panchami took place this past week, traditionally tied to a lunar calendar and a time when yellow or orange clothing is worn and the mustard crops are all in full bloom.
The fog’s been variably keeping me off the bike but there seems to be no predicting it, far as I can tell. I can walk to early morning devotions under a clear dark, planet revealing sky only to see the fog creep in as dawn approaches.
No one’s rushing the season…
How ever deep Winter has her tongs in you (or its opposite for you Down Under folks), this too shall pass. All part of this blue planet’s tilt as it circles our big light that keeps the crops growing and all of us fed.
That’s all pretty miraculous when you think about it, right along with all those itty bitty mitochondria that are making energy for us and are dependent on proper light. From the biggest to the tiniest, we live amongst wonders. Probably good to reflect on that more than we typically do.
In the meantime, reach down and pet that appreciative creature who looks to you for sustenance and proper care and supplies you with love and microflora.
As always, your restacks, comments and likes help this newsletter get found.
Till next time,
Will Falconer, DVM
Absolutely fascinating post from beginning to end! LOVE the goat woman :) And wow, after all that great stuff, here comes a shout out for About the Farm -- thank you!!! And thank you for always educating us. --Eli
Love the topics today Dr. Will. Light is so especially important. I use incandescent as I stocked up when their use was banned.
Interestingly, AVMA posted an article via AFP Fact Check accusing Dr. Judy Morgan (holistic vet) and Dr. Tenpenny (human doctor) of being misinformation specialists. Here is the excerpt from the AVMA Animal Health Smart Brief article dated 12/17/2025. Same playbook as during the Covid years.
"Social media influencers spread disinformation about modern rabies vaccine
Veterinarians in the US and Canada say a Merck rabies vaccine that uses self-amplifying RNA particle technology has been thoroughly tested and is designed to cause fewer side effects than other vaccines. The vaccine, not yet available in the US but released in Canada in June, has been effective and safe, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Influencers on social media with no veterinary or immunology training have spread false information about the new vaccine."
They really made it a hit piece on the both of them. I can't imagine trusting anything the CFIA says especially after murdering the ostriches and ruining a family business.
Thanks for all the news!