Canine brucellosis can wipe out a kennel. The highly contagious reproductive disease can cause infertility, abortions and stillbirths in dogs. Many states require kennels infected with brucellosis to quarantine, sterilize or euthanize affected dogs — all causing an enormous emotional and economic toll.

"This disease brought total ruin to one breeder we worked with to the point she had to depopulate her entire kennel," says Lin Kauffman, D.V.M., a faculty clinician at the Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center at Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames, Iowa.