At least in my state, it is very clear cut. It doesn't matter what the vaccine status is. It doesn't matter whether or not the bite was accidental or vicious. It doesn't matter what the owners have been through. If there is a bite that breaks skin and the dog/cat dies or is euthanized within 10 days of the bite, testing is mandatory. The veterinarian who was there for the bite and the physician who treated the person for the bite can get in huge trouble if they do not report it. It's an obligation.
Yeah, it's the same in my state. Our euthanasia release form even has a section that requires the owner to certify the pet hasn't bitten anyone in the past 10 days.
We recently had a situation with a dog that was overdue on its rabies vaccine and ended up biting an employee. He was ADR and losing weight rapidly, so we took rads. At my hospital, we don't sedate for rads except in special circumstances. So when he was getting up, he had a quick moment of absolute panic, out of nowhere, and bit the tech on the chin. The tech was rabies vaccinated, thankfully, but unfortunately the rads showed that the dog was just riddled with cancer. The owner was thus left with the choice of trying to see if her dog could survive another 10 days, which was unlikely given his state, or going ahead with euthanasia and having the head sent for testing. She didn't want to make him suffer by delaying euthanasia but was really angry that the dog's head would have to be sent out for testing. In the end, she had no choice but to PTS and agree to the testing.
As for isolated quarantine in a certified facility, I've only ever seen one case that necessitated this. It was a puppy that had been crated with a mother that died and tested positive for rabies. Both dogs had been brought into the country by a rescue a few days before the mother's death, and it turned out that the mother's rabies vaccination certificate had been completely falsified. That particular lovely cluster-f of a situation led to more than a dozen people having to get post-exposure prophylaxis because the fosters had taken the dog all over the place, including at least one pet store. The state health department determined that the puppy had to be quarantined for 3 months, though the law actually requires 6 months. Other than that, in both states I've worked in, at home quarantine has been the standard for animals that were UTD, and those were shorter quarantines - 10 days in this state, though I think it was slightly shorter in my old state.
It especially sucks when the animal is brought in for whatever reason, the owner tells you that their pet can be fear-aggressive and to be careful, and the employees messes up in a way that which the bite was their own fault. The owner shouldn't have to deal with all of that heartache and drama when they did everything the law required of them to make sure their pet was protected in the first place. I understand the importance of protective public health policies, but I wonder if there has ever been a bite case like described above when the animal actually showed signs of rabies during those ten days?
So what's the alternative? And why does it matter whether it's the employee's fault, assuming you can even have a fair way of deciding how much at fault someone is for getting bitten? If it's not the employee's fault, then the animal has to be quarantined, but if it is, then the client doesn't have to follow the law? How does that make any sense? Whether an employee made a mistake has no bearing on their risk of having been infected.
It sucks that dealing with a bite situation can cause drama and heartache for owners, but the reality is that a human being's life is more important than a client's feelings. Texas is at the top of the list for rabies cases in the US, and my state is number two, so "they're probably negative" isn't really good enough when you're talking about a disease that's essentially 100% fatal.
@pinkpuppy9 - hang in there. You didn't do anything wrong. And even though people may be gossiping now, it'll all blow over, and then next week, people will be whispering about some other thing that some other person supposedly did or didn't do.
