A raccoon that turned up in a horse’s stall in Canton has test positive for rabies, prompting public health officials to quarantine the unvaccinated horse and issue an alert for the fourth rabid raccoon found since May in Cherokee County.
The raccoon was discovered July 23 in the stall at a residence on North Lake Drive, according to a news release from the Dalton-based North Georgia Health District, which includes Cherokee.
The raccoon was alive but not moving, and the resident’s son shot it, the release said. The Georgia State Laboratory tested the animal’s head and returned a positive finding of rabies on July 27.
The horse was not current on its rabies vaccination, said Jennifer King, spokeswoman for the Health District. But there was no apparent rabies exposure to the horse, so officials had it vaccinated and put in a six-month quarantine; it cannot come into contact with other animals or people during that time.
Besides the raccoon cases, a dog and a fox in Cherokee also have been found to have rabies. The six instances of disease are “pretty much par" for the number of cases expected by this point in a year, King said.
“We are urging people to keep their pets and livestock vaccinated, and we are urging them to be very wary of any unfamiliar animals, whether domestic or wild ... acting sickly or friendlier than an animal would be expected to be, such as a fox or a raccoon approaching people," King said.
People also should watch out for ordinarily nocturnal critters wandering around during the day, King said.
"Rabies doesn’t always manifest itself in the way people assume it will,” such as animals foaming at the mouth, she said.
In the case of the rabid dog , six children and five adults -- five family members living in the home and visitors from Cherokee, Pickens and Houston counties -- had to undergo rabies treatments after being exposed to the unvaccinated canine in June.
The previously friendly dog had turned aggressive and bitten its owners before dying, officials said. A pig the family kept with the dog also was bitten by the animal and had to be euthanized.
In May, Gwinnett County issued a rabies alert after two children were attacked by a fox near Lawrenceville. Police shot and killed the animal, and it tested positive for the disease.
Elsewhere in Gwinnett, a cat in Duluth was found to be rabid in May, while a raccoon tested positive for the disease in Braselton in April.
For more information about rabies and its prevention, people can call the Cherokee County Environmental Health Office at 770-479-0444 or go to this Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
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