Dogs in Russia are dying with symptoms that look like rabies — days after getting vaccinated against rabies

Dog owners in several Russian regions have reported that their pets died or deteriorated sharply after routine rabies vaccinations with Multikan-8. The reports have appeared on social media, on Telegram channels, and in the press.

Most of the reports (1, 2, 3, 4) came from Yaroslavl and other towns in the region. The Yaroslavl news outlet Yarcube reported that 20 to 25 dogs were known to have died as of August 17, deaths their owners attribute to batch No. 20 of the Multikan-8 vaccine. Several more dogs remain in serious condition after being vaccinated. Users in chat groups on the subject have also reported dogs dying or falling ill shortly after Multikan-8 vaccinations in Saratov, Kaliningrad, the Leningrad region, the Moscow region, and Tyumen.

Multikan-8 is a Russian vaccine that protects dogs against distemper, adenovirus infections, parvovirus and coronavirus enteritis, leptospirosis, and rabies. It combines a dry component (a live vaccine) with a liquid component (an inactivated vaccine); the two are mixed before injection. The vaccine is made by the Moscow-based company Vetbiokhim. Dog owners, including some whose pets were affected, and veterinarians say they had used it before and had never had any complaints about either the vaccine or the manufacturer.

Owners say both puppies and adult dogs began falling ill three to five days after vaccination. They describe seizures, limb paralysis, loss of appetite, vomiting, diarrhea, high fever, and excessive drooling. Reports also said the dogs tried to gnaw at the paws where they had been injected.

Yarcube claimed that the resemblance between the dogs’ symptoms and those of rabies seriously alarmed their owners, and that people who were bitten rushed to emergency rooms, where doctors advised them to get a full course of rabies vaccinations. Still, it is impossible to say for certain whether there is a risk of rabies spreading: the symptoms owners describe can also occur with other illnesses, and the dogs may have bitten people simply because they were in pain. Rabies can be confirmed only by laboratory testing of brain tissue taken during an autopsy, and no autopsy results have been reported so far.

One Yaroslavl resident told the independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe that she had her three-year-old dog vaccinated with Multikan-8 at a state veterinary clinic as part of the animal’s annual shots. The dog seemed fine for the first two days, then started favoring the leg where she had been given the shot. Soon she stopped eating, drinking, and walking. She began vomiting, developed diarrhea and tremors, and constantly held that leg up. The owner suspects her dog was in severe pain and even tried to bite anyone who came near. “She was probably in so much pain that she just didn’t want to be touched,” the woman said. She called a veterinarian to the house. The vet suspected enteritis, but the dog died shortly after the visit.

Afterward, the woman found social media posts from other dog owners in the Yaroslavl region describing similar symptoms. The similarity persuaded her that her dog’s death could have been linked to the vaccination. “I’m sure it was the shot,” she said. “Last year we gave her the same thing, and nothing happened. It’s not the vets’ fault. They got this vaccine and they used it. The question is what was in it, what happened with this batch, and why so many animals were harmed. Now it’s frightening, because people will be afraid to vaccinate their dogs. I want them to figure this out and punish those responsible. You can’t bring the animal back. We buried her.”

Authorities and veterinarians have so far stopped short of blaming Multikan-8 for the dogs’ deaths. Pavel Rakhmanin, a veterinarian, told the pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda that pets rarely die from vaccines and that owners are reporting different symptoms and different courses of illness. “There’s another reason we can’t build a clinical picture yet: we don’t have autopsy results for even one of these dogs,” he said. “All the necessary testing is going to take time.”

Nikita Surkov, chief veterinarian at the Kovcheg veterinary clinic in Tyumen, said no one in the veterinary community yet understands what could have caused the deaths. His clinic has not seen any such cases and continues to use Multikan-8, though not batch No. 20. Another Tyumen clinic, Klever, said that amid reports that dogs may have died from the vaccine, owners have begun refusing it in large numbers.

The state-run Yaroslavl Veterinary Center said it regularly buys Multikan-8 from the manufacturer and had never had any problems with the vaccine before. This time, however, “when the vaccine was used, post-vaccination complications appeared in the health of the vaccinated animals.”

The center claims the transport of batch No. 20 — the batch dog owners blame for the deaths — “was carried out in compliance with temperature requirements.” It stopped using the vaccine on August 14 and has not resumed. “We are currently collecting and organizing data to prepare a complaint to the manufacturer. The information has been sent to the Rosselkhoznadzor office for the Tver and Yaroslavl regions,” the center said, referring to Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance.

Vetbiokhim said it is aware of reports linking dog deaths to its vaccine and is investigating them. “Based on the information we have so far, unofficial reports of such cases have come from the Yaroslavl region,” the company said. “The same batch of the vaccine was also used in other Russian regions, but no information about similar cases has come in so far.”

The manufacturer said that vaccination alone “is not sufficient grounds for establishing a causal link between the use of the vaccine and the deaths.” It expressed condolences to the owners of the dead animals and recalled batch No. 20 of Multikan-8 pending a full investigation of the circumstances.