Keeping pets (and people) healthy.

The list of zoonoses is long and continues to grow as people travel to more remote parts of the world and bring diseases back with them, and as animals that carry diseases are imported. The first human outbreak of monkeypox, a rare smallpox-like disease, occurred in the United States in May 2003. The disease was believed to have been brought into the country in April by a shipment of rodents and other small mammals imported from Africa. These animals infected prairie dogs being sold as pets, which in turn infected humans in close contact with the prairie dogs.