A. E. PALMER 
989 
need what the chronic animal needs. And these 
two classifications should be separate and the 
price of these animals should be separate, and 
the length of quarantine can be separate. The 
reason I brought up the bit about rabies before 
was because you said you went to a thirty day 
quarantine because you had a rabies scare. And 
I couldn't quite understand the logic of that. 
Dr. Palmer: I think I can answer that. I 
won't assume the responsibility for having 
changed it. The fifteen day period at that point 
was just not considered long enough and the im- 
petus came from the rabies scare, but I think it 
would have been changed anyway. And I don't 
agree with you that we shouM issue acute ani- 
mals because I don't think that any quarantine 
less than forty-five days is good enough. Very 
honestly, we would love to be out of the business 
of supplying random source dogs. We would like 
to supply colony-reared dogs and we hope that 
eventually we'll get there. 
Dr. Thayer : Why not go to six months ? 
Dr. Palmer : Because we don't feel that any- 
thing beyond forty-five days will improve the 
quality of the animal. 
George H. Barney, Vanderbilt University: 
Do you believe that the incidence of respiratory 
diseases in dogs would be markedly decreased if 
you selected them at the dog pound instead of 
purchasing them from a vendor? 
Dr. Palmer: No, I think the only way you 
could reduce it would be to hold the animals in a 
more isolated state from the time the dog 
catcher picks them up and to immunize them 
against those common viral diseases for which 
immunization procedures exist. Now, I don't 
know of anyone who's tried this. Perhaps some- 
one in the audience has, but I think that, in the 
monkey, for instance, it's been found that if the 
animals are kept in isolation from the trap to 
the laboratory, they could produce animals 
which were much more healthy. 
Dr. Barney: This might interest you. For 
years we kept all our dogs in one central build- 
ing. Then, in 1969, we constructed an animal re- 
search facility in the country. We conditioned 
our dogs there for a week and then vaccinated 
them for distemper and hepatitis. The instance 
of this upper respiratory infection has practi- 
cally disappeared. We like this procedure and it 
works well for us. 
Dr. Palmer: You immunize as soon as they 
come in ? 
Dr. Barney : Yes. 
Dr. Palmer : And what is your source? Is it a 
vendor or a pound? 
Dr. Barney : We select these dogs at the dog 
pound. For instance, if they have fifty dogs, 
we'll select perhaps five or six, just by general 
health, skin condition, presence of diarrhea or 
respiratory signs. This has worked well for us. 
Dr. Palmer : You could probably do a lot bet- 
ter if you went out and picked them up off the 
street before the dog pound got them. 
Chairman: I'd like to make two comments. 
One, the transportation from the Animal Cen- 
ter to the NIH reservation which I mentioned 
involves a distance of thirty-five miles or 
usually an hour on a truck and it is a stress, and 
the dogs do break. Another thing, in line with 
Dr. Pacheco's and Dr. Palmer's ideas, dogs, es- 
pecially random source dogs used in the labora- 
tory without examination of the right ventricle 
and pulmonary artery, can never be said to be 
free of heart worms. They are asymptomatic 
and do exist as a problem in the laboratory. 
There are many occasions of accidental findings 
of the worms: there's negative blood, but the 
adults are there; they're just not producing mi- 
crofilaria at that stage. 
