Said Zoran, “It’ll never be that easy again.” The joyful ending capped a three-week affair in which everything that could have gone right, did: Bentley stayed healthy, he endured captivity with model behavior, and veterinarians trained to respond to all manner of emergencies were nearby and ready to step up. Bentley’s tests came back negative, his owner recovered from the illness and on Nov. “We were preparing ourselves to try to argue against … (euthanasia), because that would have been a sad day on many, many, many levels: scientific levels, personal levels, Nina Pham’s level - all kinds of levels,” Zoran said in a telephone interview.Īs it turns out, no arguments were necessary. Professors at Texas A&M University’s veterinary college and leaders of the university’s Veterinary Emergency Team, Zoran and Bissett would have advocated keeping the pet in a biologically secure facility and studying how the virus manifests in a dog, a subject about which science knows very little.īeyond their desire for more knowledge, the veterinarians wanted to safeguard the charismatic pup for his owner, a nurse named Nina Pham, who last month became the first person to contract Ebola in the United States. “If this dog's blood, urine or feces was to come back positive for the virus, the (probable) plan was euthanasia,” Zoran said. It wasn’t their own safety they worried about, but that of the Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Bentley. Deb Zoran and Wesley Bissett felt the highest stress while awaiting results of the pet’s initial test for the fearsome virus.

Books & VINcyclopedia of Diseases (Formerly Associate)ĭuring the 16 days that they tended the world’s first dog to be quarantined for possible Ebola, Drs.VINcyclopedia of Diseases (Formerly Associate).

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