I agree with you on pet vaccines, to be honest with you, I don't necessarily agree with human vaccines either...I've never had a vaccine in my life and I am 100% healthy and always have been so...yet, Doctors would've have liked to have given me two dozen plus vaccines by now and would had my Mother not been so set against it when I was a child. To a point I understand the "theory" behind vaccines...it's just the lack of evidence to back the theory's up that concerns me.
I mainly do titer testing just to have an idea as to where their levels are at and it makes my vet feel more comfortable about not giving them the "regular" vaccines if I do that. I do agree with you though, titer testing alone, cannot always be a reliable source as it can show that they "need" a vaccine, when in fact, they probably don't.
That's nice that your clinic tailors vaccines to your client. I absolutely love my vet, very intelligent guy and he's been a Doctor for 30+ years, he has so much knowledge to share but, concerning vaccines he is pretty much set in his ways of what he was taught and I think I'm about the only person at the clinic that doesn't comply with "normal" vaccines so he sort of gives me a hard time about it. He does feel better about my not vaccinating them if I give them a titer test every year, which I do...I do wish he was more open minded concerning vaccines though...I love every single thing about that place with the exception of that...
Well, I think there's a time and place for vaccines, I think a completely un-vaccinated dog is not a good thing...I just think over all, vets make you feel like you NEED to vaccinate your pet all the time and I really don't think they need all those things in their body..."you are right though, too much medicine is as bad as no medicine at all" it's finding that middle ground that can, sometimes be a difficult thing to do...
There's a lot of things about vaccines that just don't add up...the fact that my 2-5 pound dogs get the same amount of a vaccine as someone's 100 pound great dane, has NEVER made any sense to me at all....I give my cats their kitten series and a booster in a year. That's it for life---although if I can find a vet that will sign off on 3- or 4-year rabies vaccine, I would like to do that for legal reasons. But, like Trainer said, either the animal is immune from the first adult vaccine or it isn't, and extra vaccines aren't going to do any good.
The main thing that changed my mind about vaccines is that the 1-year and even the 3-year recommended intervals are NOT based on ANY scientific data! NONE! They just said, "well, lets vaccinate the dog and see if he's immune in a year", and of course the dog was still immune in a year so they decided to sell it as a yearly vaccine. Once health problems started popping up from yearly vaccines, they tried 3 years, and of course the dog was still immune, so they went with that. But nobody has ever done a study to see exactly how long the vaccine DOES last. Although I think there's a rabies challenge study going on, and it started in 2000, and, last I heard, the test dogs were still immune in 2008. Hopefully that study will make a difference.
Unfortunately, I do have to vaccinate my dogs according to the vet's schedule because I have to board them occasionally. My vet's vaccine schedule for dogs is every other year for the core vaccines. Since the boarding kennel requires Bordatella vaccine, I get them the intranasal vaccine, since I feel that's somewhat safer than the injectables. I wish I didn't have to, though
I am really hoping the rabies challenge fund will start to change some things very soon!
