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If you’re similar to most pet owners today, you’re probably finding the whole pet vaccine issue more and more confusing. Your conventional veterinarian tells you in no uncertain terms that “as a responsible pet owner, you must do the right thing and follow my advice: vaccinate your pet every year” with annual booster shots. On top of that, you’ve also heard the horror stories about pets who have developed cancer at the site of vaccine injections, and a number of other stories about adverse vaccine reactions in both dogs and cats.

Are we vaccinating our pets too often? Are we giving them too many vaccines? Are veterinarians doing what is best for our pets’ health, or is this just about the ‘bottom line’?

There are many different views, often completely contradictory. The Veterinary Society in general is telling pet owners to vaccinate yearly, that vaccines are not harmful to our pets. Many veterinarians tell pet owners to vaccinate casually, that “at worst, they won’t cause any harm”. The evidence, and many individual veterinarians and alternative pet health practitioners, suggests otherwise.

Why do we vaccinate our pets?

Why we vaccinate in the first place, and a basic understanding of vaccines, is important. The reason we give our pets vaccines is to protect them against infectious disease. When a vaccine is administered, it stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies (”Opposite Invaders”). The new antibody is produced just for the virus we have vaccinated for. Then if your dog or cat is exposed to the actual virus later on, he or she will be able to respond to the disease quickly and produce antibodies to overcome the disease before it takes hold in your pet’s system.

In theory, since vaccines are able to protect our pets from life threatening diseases like rabies and parvovirus, they sound wonderful. In that sense they most are - vaccines have saved countless lives. If that’s the case, why be concerned? Are there real drawbacks, reasons for caution?

Reasons for caution with vaccines

The evidence is there for us to see, if we simply look. With the medical advancements we’ve made, we would expect our pets to be healthier than ever - but in reality, our pets are sicker than ever before. It is more and more common to see cancer in dogs and cats under 5 years of age, and autoimmune diseases are on the rise as well. Diseases such as immune mediated hemolytic anemia, immune mediated skin disease, vaccine induced skin cancer in cats, skin allergies, arthritis, leukemia, inflammatory bowel disease and neurological conditions are just a few of the diseases that have shown a link to over-vaccination in our pets. In fact, there are links to most of the common chronic health diseases of dogs and cats due to over-vaccination.

The belief behind this is that when we vaccinate, the immune system can become ‘over-taxed’ and may respond inappropriately, especially when multiple vaccines are given at once. Many pet owners see adverse reactions immediately after their pet has been vaccinated, including vomiting, diarrhea, and abscesses at the site of the vaccine injection. In others, it shows up later, in the form of a multitude of various diseases. One study has shown that the more vaccines given at once, the higher the risk of developing sarcoma (soft-tissue cancer) - up to approximately a 175% increase if administered in the same location.

While over-vaccination may not be the sole reason we have so many sick pets today, it is definitely a major factor. Other reasons include low quality food, environmental toxins, and genetic deterioration due to poor quality breeding. The combination of these factors is leaving each generation more and more susceptible to disorders and chronic disease. Regardless, we are vaccinating our pets too often for more diseases than they truthfully need.

Reasons for over-vaccination

The reasons we have been over-vaccinating are manifold. These include the original belief that “at worst, vaccines won’t cause any harm”, to the bottom line of both veterinarians and the companies that produce the vaccines. Many veterinarians choose to ignore current research because they feel the benefits of vaccines outweigh any risks, or because they still rely on ‘annual booster shots’ as a source of income.

By now you are probably wondering if you should vaccinate your pets at all, with the risks of vaccines being so high. In short, I do currently advise a limited vaccine regimen for most cases - just not as often and not as many vaccines as you currently are giving your pet. Alternatives to vaccines do exist, but only if you are willing to make changes in how you care for your pet and how you view the risks involved. In Part 2 of this series, I will provide my recommended vaccine schedule and an overview of vaccine alternatives.

Tags: Dogs

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