Mad Dogs

the long version

In 1988, the first major outbreak of dog rabies began sweeping north through Texas from Mexico, spread by free-roaming coyotes to domestic dogs. The outbreak killed two people, including a fourteen-year-old boy, and threatened the major cities of San Antonio and Austin. The only realistic tool to stop it was an oral vaccine developed, but never widely used, in the United States -- although Canada and much of Europe had wiped out the disease in wild foxes using it. Texas health officials, battling time and the CDC, dropped millions of vaccine-filled baits over fifteen thousand square miles to stop the spread. Mad Dogs describes the epidemic, the politics surrounding the response to it, and the most ambitious attempt on U.S. soil to snuff out the disease.