The Vaccination Decision

Recently, Anna did some research on canine vaccines, and to decide what vaccination protocol to follow for us dogs. There was so much information and different opinions on the subject!

In the end, we decided that all of us dogs would get a single vaccination as a puppy (aged between 12 - 16 weeks) for Parvovirus, Distemper and Canine Hepatitis. After that, no more for life. The reason we would wait until that age was because giving the vaccine any earlier than this would be blocked by the mothers immunity. 

We will not be getting either the Lepto or Kennel Cough vaccination. This is for several reasons, to start with the Lepto vaccine - it has the highest risk of adverse effects, and only covers the dog for a very short period of time (often less than a year, meaning your dog would have to be boosted reguarly). As it is a bacterial infection, as long as it is caught early on then it can be treated. For Kennel Cough, as there is so many different strains, it will not prevent your dog from getting KC and therefore ineffective and not worth it in our opinion. Instead, Anna will focus on keeping us healthy so we have strong immune systems, and therefore should we get KC the chances are it would only be mild. 

We will not be getting 'boosters' as with every vaccine comes a risk of adverse effects, plus in the majority of dogs if they are given the initial puppy booster this then covers them for life. 

You can titer test your dogs which is a blood test that shows immunity to these diseases, however we have decided not to do this as our Vets don't offer this in-house meaning it would be very expensive and we don't feel the need to do this. 

It is of course, just a personal decision we have made for our dogs from the re-search we have done and we just wanted to share our choices. If you would like to find out more you should look at WSAVA, Dogs Naturally and Mercola Healthy Pets websites.