Are We Vaccinating Dogs with Too Many Vaccines Too Often?
Cynda Crawford, DVM, PhD
University of Florida
Introduction
Since the 1950’s, veterinary medicine has done an excellent job in educating pet owners on the importance of vaccination. There is no debate over the health benefits that millions of dogs have derived from vaccination against distemper, parvovirus, infectious hepatitis, and rabies. The decrease in number of human, canine, and farm animal cases of rabies in recent years, despite an increasing incidence in wildlife, is largely attributable to vaccination of dogs.1
Vaccination not only protects the individual dog, but also decreases disease prevalence and transmission in the canine population as a whole, even if some of the dogs are not vaccinated. For example, rabies is not effectively transmitted if more than 70 percent of the canine population is vaccinated.1 Continue reading The Current Status of Canine Vaccinations: