How many of you, like me, don't vaccinate your animals? I've done a lot of reading over the past few years about the additional risks of cancer that are placed on animals from vaccinations. Oh, I am not saying that vaccinations necessarily do more harm than good, and if my cat went outdoors, I'd probably consider the rabies vaccination, but there are risks involved, and people should be able to weigh these risks and make decisions based on them. My cat is eighteen years old, and she does not go outdoors. I have never seen a bat in my current home, nor have I witnessed any rabid raccoons rummaging through my dresser drawers. I don't believe that I have rabies. Given the lack of a reasonable risk of contracting rabies, the risk of cancer from the vaccine seems greater than the problem it is intended to cure. Still, my cat is getting older, and requires more veterinarian visits than she did when she was younger. Most of us can identify with that, I trust, but we usually have no trouble finding a doctor who will see us, regardless as to whether or not we have had our vaccinations. Plus, there is the fact that many of us do go outdoors. Yet, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a vet who will see my cat without insisting on vaccinations. I have had to insinuate that she has been vaccinated without actually saying so, and I have had to outright lie about it. I can't take her to the same veterinarian more than once or twice because he'll insist on having her vaccination records sent to his office. My cat does not roam free, endangering other cats in the neighborhood. There is no logical reason for her to risk cancer just so that a veterinary office can check off a space on a form.
I've had similar problems. For a while, I had one vet at a veterinary hospital who understood my concerns about vaccinating my cats, so I would always ask for her. But she is no longer there.
I don't think it is as important to have cats that are indoor cats vaccinated as it is to have your dog(s) vaccinated. Growing up we always had dogs or cats, usually both. All the cats we had were inside cats, they knew they had it good and had no desire to go outside at all so there was very little danger of any animal bites or of them eating some animal carcass that was infected. Truth be told you have a higher chance of getting toxi or cat scratch fever then of them becoming rapid. It does happen on occasion, but not as often as you would think. I do worry about FIV because that can be brought in on a persons shoes or clothes, it is very contagious and a very sad way for your cats to die. Dog's on the other hand should have vaccinations. I would agree with you on trips to the vet- and I will even go as far to say this is something I run into when I go to my own doctor. It just seems like there is a tendency to just shoot you up with whatever vaccination is in style at that moment. Finally after 5 years of asking my doctor gave up on the flu vaccination. Not getting it, don't care.
I don't have a pet at this time but we have had more than our share when my daughters were growing up. The last cat would cause so much stress to get her out the house and into the car that most of time we just would forego the visit to the vet. We even had one vet tell us to find another vet because she was not welcome in their office anymore. I would be concerned if the animal came in contact with other animals or the bugs that hide in the grass like ticks that can give an animal or a person Lyme disease. I agree with the statement that doctors are all to quick to give you a shot of this or that or a prescription. My old doctor gave me a prescription for Lipitor which has been found to cause Diabetes II in women. I would be very upset right now if I had taken that as directored and developed diabetes. I just needed to lose weight, which I did.
When I was growing up back in the 1950's; most of us kids didn't ever have any shots. The schools offered them in the fall, and only if the parent sent a letter requesting that their child had the vaccines. Yes, we usually got measles and mumps; but it helped to develop a strong immune system, and no one worried about it. None of the dogs ever had shots, even rabies shots, and the vet probably would have thought you were crazy if you asked about shots for your CAT, for heaven's sake.....that just wasn't done ! ! Very seldom did anyone's dog or cat get sick and die, and then it was usually from eating something bad, like rat poison someone had left where a dog or cat could get into it. Or the cat ate the mouse that ate the poison. But no animals ever, ever got rabies. We had lots of bats, and I remember seeing them flying around the street lamps at night eating bugs; but apparently none of them had rabies either. We all learned about rabies when we went to the movies and watched "Old Yeller", and we all cried when he died. I still think that most animals do not need all of the shots that the vets think are important. Maybe they need more than they did back in the 1950's; but I am not even so sure about that part.
I grew up on a farm and we walked around barefoot in the summer. As a kid, we rarely saw a doctor and I can't know for sure which childhood diseases I had, because they weren't actually diagnosed. At any rate, there weren't very many of them. Once, I jumped off of a shed and landed on a board that had a rusty nail in it. The nail went into my foot far enough that, when I tried to pick up my foot, the board came with it. My mom cleaned it out with soap and water, filled the hole with iodine, and bandaged it up. Veterinarians were called only for animals such as horses or cows and, even then, my dad handled most of the medical things that occurred with them as well. Cats and dogs never saw a veterinarian unless he was already there to see one of the horses, and they were never vaccinated. Once, dad called a vet out to see one of his horses about something, I don't know, because I didn't pay much attention to the horses. While he was there, he also took a look at one of our dogs that had lost a battle with a porcupine. Dad had already removed most of the quills, but there were a few that he couldn't get to. We took in orphaned or injured wildlife, such as a fox, racoons, and even a muskrat, a porcupine, and a skunk, nursing them through their injuries or raising them until they were old enough to go off on their own. I have never had pets that were as much fun as that fox or the couple of raccoons that I raised, yet they weren't vaccinated, no one panicked when the fox would get a little too exuberant and nip me, or when the coon decided he could climb my legs while I was wearing short pants. Yes, there have been great advances in medicine, but there have been large leaps backwards too, and some of those come from the fact that we never allow a child's immune system to be developed anymore.
I think there is some truth to what you say about the immune systems of today's youth Ken, you cannot build active immunity without exposure. When I was a girl it was not unusual for mothers to take their kids to a place where someone had the chicken pox or measles so that their kids would get exposed then and have them. This is actually quite brilliant when you think of it because there is the control of all the kids in the house getting it and getting over it in a controlled manner. Back in the 60's, come to find, the vaccinations we were given were not right for some reason. I was reading an article yesterday that was talking about how this train went thru the area with someone on it that has the measles, so I clicked this CDC link and thats what it said, the vaccinations for MMR in the 60's were garbage. Evidently many were not the live virus type. When my sister had her son 20 odd years ago they told her when he was a baby getting ready to eat solid food, that she should only feed him a single food type for like a month to see if he was allergic. It seems there has been this whole sterile idea in society for quite a few decades now. Allergies are no joke I know this, but isn't it true that to treat some allergies they use more of the allergen to build up immunity? Seems like a catch 22 scenario to me.
Rabies actually occurred in my county about ten years ago so I dutifully took all the cats, and even visitors, in for rabies shots. At that time my friend and working partner was a feral-born tomcat, Mackerel. As a starving, flea-bitten alley kitten Mac had approached a child to solicit food; "caring" types had then trapped him and his mother and siblings and sent them to me. Mac arrived first, spent one day bonding with me, and then spent the rest of the summer persuading his more wary family to become pets too. He became a big strong cat who spent a lot of time not only courting, but subsequently helping, all the unaltered female cats in the neighborhood. He was gentle and protective with kittens, especially the ones that resembled him. He also seemed to understand more words than the average cat or dog ever learns. So, time came for his annual vaccination. Mac did not want to get into his carrier. Nobody wanted to try to put him into the carrier. I tried asking him nicely. He got into the carrier and cooperated with the vet. On the way home we got him a treat--grilled chicken on a stick--and I said, "I'm sorry, Mac, but the cost of living with me is that you have to have a shot once a year." And after that he didn't live with me any more. He visited often. He'd call, and I'd go out and pet him and offer him a treat, and he'd very politely offer the treat to the other cats. After about half an hour he'd leave. I'd call, and he'd "meow" in reply, but he would not come back. He didn't enjoy being a pet enough to put up with rabies shots. Let's just say I still believe it's very important that all animals that anyone would miss have rabies vaccinations if rabies has occurred in the area. If there were any real danger, I'd even try to immunize our resident skunk...and I would have trapped Mackerel, too. As things were, Mac lived another three years as a fully feral cat, no vaccinations and very little human attention, before he was hit by a truck. And I seriously believe that I'd warned him about the dangers of his lifestyle choice, and he'd chosen to discount those warnings, about as intelligently as a friend's son had chosen to discount his parents' warnings and join the Army that same year. The soldier was lucky; he's still alive. Mac was less lucky. But I respected his choice--in a way I might not necessarily respect the choice of a less intelligent animal.