Vaccination – Is it really necessary?

In a word; YES!
Before vaccines were available infectious diseases killed thousands of pets each year. Then we started to vaccinate our animals and vaccination became one of veterinary medicine’s greatest triumphs, saving countless lives and becoming a routine part of caring pet ownership. Concerns over the safety of the MMR vaccine and recent discussions in the press have worried a lot of pet owners. Should they still be vaccinating their pets? Are vaccines actually necessary? Or is vaccination just a way for vets to make more money?

All the staff of Danetree vaccinate their own pets each year. Many of the diseases that we vaccinate against are frequently fatal or at best, cause severe disease that will necessitate long periods of nursing a very sick and unhappy pet. Only vaccination can prevent diseases such as canine distemper, feline leukaemia or myxomatosis in rabbits. Though vaccination has reduced the frequency of many infectious diseases, none has been eradicated altogether.

Boosters are essential to maintain protection. At Danetree we prefer to give each pet the smallest number of vaccinations possible and will vary the components that we give each year to achieve maximum protection with minimum vaccination. For example, it is now possible to vaccinate dogs against distemper, parvovirus and infectious hepatitis only once every three years but it is still necessary to vaccinate against leptospirosis every year. So you will find that some years your dog is vaccinated with a large vaccine to protect him against seven diseases but that in other years he will only be vaccinated against two. Conversely we have found in rabbits that the local wild type of myxomatosis is so virulent that we now have to vaccinate pet rabbits every six months in order to protect them against this horrible debilitating disease.

Do vaccines cause more illness than they prevent? With any medicinal product some animals may have an adverse reaction but serious reactions are exceptionally rare. Following claims by an anti-vaccine group that vaccination causes high level of illness a large research project was undertaken by the Animal Health Trust. The study found no evidence that dogs suffered any increased level of illness after vaccination; in fact recently vaccinated dogs were actually the healthiest!

All licensed pet vaccines have undergone rigorous efficacy and safety trials and a strict licensing procedure. There is no such requirement for homeopathic nosodes and when serious attempts have been made to prove their effectiveness, for example in a parvovirus experiment, the nosodes failed to prevent or even reduce either illness or death rates.

We at Danetree believe that all dogs, cats, rabbits and ferrets should be vaccinated to prevent serious infectious disease. We use products that we have great faith in and use vaccination protocols that will give your pet the optimum protection while using the minimum number of vaccine components. If you have any questions or worries please speak to any of our vets who will explain things further.