Aspects of nasal, oropharyngeal and anal carriage of in normal dogs and dogs with pyoderma

Aspects of carriage of Staphylococcus intermedius were studied in three groups of dogs. In 150 normal dogs presenting for annual booster inoculations, carriage rates for S. intermedius in the anterior nares (36%) and on the anal ring (36%) were recorded. In 44 dogs presented for routine elective surgery, carriage of S. intermedius was higher on the caudal nares (41%) than on the anterior nares (34%), oropharynx (25%) or anal ring (30%) allowing an assessment of the accuracy of basing nasal carriage rates on swabbing the anterior nares alone. A new finding was that animals from multidog households had significantly higher (P < 0.005) nasal and anal carriage rates than dogs from single-dog households. In 33 dogs with superficial pyoderma, carrier rates were similar to those reported by others and significantly higher than in the other two groups with regard to both nasal and anal carriage (P < 0.05 and P < 0.005, respectively).