vaccination time?

[G. Festerling]

I laugh out loud when I read things like "......are diseases of the young and rare in adults, whether vaccinated or not!"!

 

First, I know better....I have fostered adult dogs with parvo, distemper and a few others. Granted, parvo has not killed an adult dog of mine yet but sure has cost me thousands before I knew how to treat it myself. Distemper sure has killed a few adult dogs despite expensive, medical intervention.

 

Two, it sure is essential to survive being young in order to become an adult....! Just sayin'!

 

I think Emily also makes a great point. We deal with bloodtests for diseases all the time. A big part having to be be able to determine if the titers are due to vaccines or due to exposure. Not many people test their pups before any vaccines as a baseline. Or even their new dogs. Might not be a bad idea but would probably be insanely expensive if you are needing to cover lyme, lepto, parvo, distemper, rabies and whatever else.

 

I suppose most of it also boils down to lifestyle. Run a barn like I do, in the country with wild life around, I am religious on the lepto. As well as rabies not because it is required but because I want to protect my pets. I do the 3 year. But still. I also said it before, don't tell me lepto is not common like some try...I don't care if the percentage is minute...I lost a dream pup to it when the craze with the taking the lepto out of the combo shot first started. My vet did it without consulting with me and I would probably not have known better then anyway.

 

When I fostered a lot, meaning animals from shelters coming into my home, I did annual vaccines no matter what,. Kept my own population alive and healthy while that was not always the case for some of the fosters. Distemper was a big problem for a while with every dog pulled from a certain shelter. Mine where fine. One dog pulled from them and another private rescue with unknown (fresh the moment he came here) vaccine status, both died. Despite weeks and weeks of trying.

 

So do not tell me vaccines don't work. Having said that, because I am looking to back down a bit and I have older dogs now, I don't foster as much. Or only from clean shelters. So again, LIFESTYLE should be a big consideration.