While I appreciate warnings, I found the message about a "new law" to
be unnecessarily vague and possibly unduly alarming.

Moscow, Idaho has a relatively new ordinance that requires ferret
owners to maintain rabies vaccinations. That is only a tiny fraction
of the "Washington-Idaho Border".

The new Washington law is not much of a departure from past law,
perhaps the major differences being that they specifically address
rabies, and include ferrets in the law as well as dogs and cats. The
new law can be found in its entirety here:

    http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=246-100-197

This is not much different from before, for a household pet. You want
to keep your animals vaccinated anyway, yes?

But the most important point, in my opinion, is to note that this is
NOT a response to any increased incidence of rabies.

Washington State has had only 2 instances of human rabies in 20 years,
both from bats. (Bats are the only known carriers in both Washington
and Idaho.) I know of no incidents at all of pet rabies reported in
either state during that period.

Idaho had 10 detected cases of rabid bats in the entire state in 2008,
and in 2011 there were only 8 bats reported in the state. (And none of
them were anywhere near Moscow.)

So please, residents along the WA-ID border, do not take alarm. But
you should try to keep your rabies vaccinations up to date anyway.

Lonny Eachus

[Posted in FML 7294]