The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a recent report revealed that a dog infected with plague spread the disease to four residents of Colorado.

As per health officials, such a situation where dog infected humans with plague has come before them for the first time in the US history.

The dog, a 2-year-old American pit bull terrier, became sick last summer with a fever and jaw rigidity, with some other symptoms.

ABC News reported that the dog's condition declined so quickly that it was euthanized the following day at a local vet's office.

According to the CDC report, after four days of dog's death his owner has to be hospitalized as he suffered from high fever and a bloody cough.

His condition also worsened over next few hours, but an initial blood culture was misidentified.

As his symptoms grew worse, the test was redone and then doctors found that the man was infected with pneumonic plague, according to the CDC report.

Later the health officials said that the remains of the dog were also tested and it was found that the dog tested positive for the plague bacteria.

John Douglas of Tri-County Health Department in Colorado said in a statement that the source of the outbreak of the incident was quite surprising to him.

He said that usually dog's do not get sick at all or they get a minor illness once they guts infected with the plague.

Leda author of the report Janine Runfola of the Tri-County Health Department in Colorado said in an explanation that cats are more likely to infect humans with the disease than dogs because they exhibit more symptoms.

"For pneumonic plague a more likely scenario would be you have a cat [play] with prairie dogs and infected fleas get on the cat. The cat gets sick and sneezes and coughs on its owner", said Runfola.