Health and Well Being

A little late to the party, and I probably won't bother submitting this to DABAD but something happened to a fellow agility competitor's dog earlier this week, and with it being such a hot topic in the news right now, I'm going to come out and say it.

Don't be an anti-vax'er. Vaccinate appropriately, vaccinate cautiously, take it very seriously. But there's a reason these vaccines became so popular in the first place: they save lives! These things CAN kill your dog. Some of them can even kill YOU. The head veterinarian of the ER department where I work likes to tell the story of the abandoned 6 week old kitten she brought home to her kids. A few weeks later, it started having seizures. They eventually euthanized the kitten, and decided to submit it for rabies testing because of the strange neurologic signs it was having when it became ill. The veterinarian, every staff member who had handled it, both her kids, her husband, and a bunch of her kids' friends even had to go through post exposure prophylaxis protocols.

And then there's what happened this week. It happened at my hospital, so I have at least part of the story of what happened, but obviously cannot share any details. And the story isn't done yet, it isn't final. But if it ends the way I think it will, it could have been so easily prevented. Yes, the dog is DEAD. That part of the story is complete. Nothing will bring him back. It is so sad.

It's a given that our dogs travel a lot. Are exposed to far more than even average pets. Every weekend they are jostled into crating areas that are only slightly cleaner and less of a germ factory than your average day care, only because our "kids" don't have hands and opposable thumbs to grime up every available surface. Thus, your dog has a HIGHER chance of coming into contact with nastiness and of passing on that nastiness. Why do you think it's ok not to take precautions? And the most basic of which is vaccinating for those things that can kill your or another dog?

Your veterinarian is not trying to just make money off of you. Talk to him or her. Be reasonable. Listen. We paid a very large amount of money to become educated about the various diseases out there we're facing. Sure, the drug companies are the ones supplying us the vaccines and feeding us the glories of their products. But we were trained to be skeptical, observant, scientists; if the vaccines were completely bogus, don't you think we'd be able to see through that? And do you really think the drug companies WANT to sell junk? All of them started out with the same goal we all have: to keep our pets healthy. Yes, I see plenty of health issues come up that may or may not be in part due to vaccines. The immune system is such a funny thing, and when things go awry with it, it is rarely ever due to a single event. I do know that distemper, parvo, rabies, even Lyme disease... they KILL pets. No question. Unlike auto-immune issues that are so multifactorial, these disease agents single handedly can KILL. I'm not saying vaccinate for every thing every year. Just, be reasonable and be constantly ready to re-evaluate your pet's vaccination program. Heck, maybe take the same approach for your own vaccines.

So that's my soap box on health and well being.