I’ve been planning a post about vaccines and pets for over two years now, ever since Cricket had her latest reaction to a DHPP shot. It was one of many mild, not life threatening but concerning, reactions to different vaccines over the years. Since there is a lot to cover on this subject, I decided to break it down into a series over the next few weeks. For this first part I want to give you background on Cricket’s reactions, and other reasons questions arose for me concerning vaccinations.
First of all, I want to make one thing clear: I am not against vaccinating your pets. I will be sharing our experiences, as well as information I have learned through research and from our own veterinarian. My intent is only to share information that might be important for pet families to know. You should always consult your own trusted vet when it comes to the care and safety of your own pets’ health.
From the time we had our first dog, we had them vaccinated at our vet’s recommendation yearly. The only vaccination that we did as a 3 year was the rabies, per the requirements by our state. We had done the same with our cats in more recent years. Many years ago, I took in my childhood cat from my parents. The only time Concha had been to a vet in all her years (she was probably around 12 when I took her), had been when she was spayed after having several litters of kittens. Concha was a stray that we kids had talked my Dad into letting us keep, and my parents really weren’t financially able to take her to the vet yearly. At the time I took her I really didn’t see the need to take her to the vet either (bear in mind this was about 25 years ago).
In the early 1990’s there was a big rabies scare in our area, and rabies clinics popped up everywhere. We felt we would be neglectful to not take our cats and have them vaccinated. Our other cats visited the vet more regularly, but we felt Concha should have that vaccine and took her to a clinic. By then she was 18 years old but very healthy. If memory serves me correctly, it was about 3 weeks later that she went into kidney failure and we had to have her put down. I’ve always questioned our decision to get her that vaccine. Was it just a coincidence? Most likely, but I still have my doubts and have never forgotten that.
However, we still kept our pets vaccinated over the subsequent years. Once the cats became indoor cats, we did find out they needed fewer vaccines, which is an added benefit and savings to having indoor cats.
There was never an issue with these vaccines for either cats or dogs until our beagle Cricket came along. When Cricket got her first round of shots as a puppy, I don’t remember any issues. The next year when she got what included rabies, Lyme, and DHLPP (distemper, hepatitis, leptospirosis, parainfluenza and parvovirus), initially she was fine. But within 24 hours afterwards she was lying on the bed refusing to move, and yelped when I tried to touch her. We immediately called the vet but were reassured this sometimes happens, and to keep an eye on her. She was better within a couple of days. When it came time for her next round of shots the following year, of course we had a discussion about this. Our vet felt there was a good chance that she reacted to the “L”, Leptospirosis, in the DHLPP, because that is the one that most commonly gets reactions. So that was removed, making that vaccine into a three year instead of yearly (when they add the “L” it has to be given yearly, otherwise it can be a 3 year vaccine).
I don’t remember exactly how it went after that, but I do remember there was another time she was lame again, and after that we started splitting up the vaccines. Honestly, I’m not sure we ever hit on exactly which one was bothering her, but we thought it was either the rabies or Lyme (initially she had those at the same time and I think that was when she was lame again). We did not think that the DHPP was responsible, so when she had that two years ago we were surprised at what happened. This time she was scratching herself non-stop just a few hours after that vaccine. Of course I was on the phone with our vet again immediately, and we gave her Benadryl and were instructed to watch for swelling or breathing difficulties. It took two doses of that to finally get her to stop scratching and fall asleep. That was when my research began. Last year the only shot she was due for was Lyme, and we skipped that. This year she was due for her rabies (which is required by our state every 3 years), and there was no way she was getting that shot without a big discussion about it with our vet. My feeling is that she possibly reacts to something else in the vaccines. The allergic reaction especially scared me, even though it wasn’t extreme, I know that in people sometimes the next reaction can be worse and life threatening.
Once I had done my initial research two years ago, I knew when we took our golden retrievers Sheba and Moses for their yearly exams, that we wanted to switch them to a three year vaccine schedule as well. Those two plus Kobi had been getting yearly vaccines with no issues, but I had learned that might not be necessary. They were to be given a DHPP that year, without the L (which could be given separately if needed, but is not highly recommended in our area). Moses had lost some weight at that point, but he had been a bit overweight so our vet was not concerned. He had the shots he was due for – DHPP and Lyme. Three weeks later Moses was diagnosed with cancer, and went for surgery to hopefully remove it. The cancer was too far spread, and there was nothing to be done. We chose not to have him revived. Do I think that the vaccines caused the cancer? No, not at all, I think he already had the cancer; but I do suspect that having those vaccines might have accelerated it.
I feel like I’m probably leaving you with more questions than answers, but I felt it was important to illustrate why I’ve had so many questions. There’s a lot of media these days about human vaccinations, and I don’t want you to think that I’m just buying into some of that hype and applying it to my pets. I hope you’ll come back to read more of what I have found out in my quest for information, and where we are going from here.
Have any of your pets ever had reactions to vaccines?
Today we are joining the Thursday Barks & Bytes blog hop. Thank you to our hosts 2 Brown Dawgs blog, and Heart Like a Dog. Please visit other blogs through the links below!
I’m just starting to read your vaccine series which is definitely of interest to me. Is it a three-part series or do you have other instalments planned, Janet? 🙂
In case you didn’t see it in Part 2, I do have 3-4 more posts planned, so it should end up being 6-7 parts. Thanks so much for your interest!
Thanks for writing about your concern with vaccines. I agree with what Ann said and would of wrote the same thing as well as know what dog 2browndawgs is talking about that got lepto. Vaccines need to be tailored to each individual and their dog. Yes they can get reactions as you can get a reaction to everything but as health problems I think most of them are coincidence but I do see how it would scare me if that all happened to my animals. I have vaccinated all my animals each year until the dhpp vaccination was approved for every three years (after they have the puppy series and one year vacccination). Now I have that one done every three years as well as rabies and lyme, lepto and bordetella have all been yearly, I take my dogs to too many events that I’m not taking the chance with them but I also have been very lucky and have never had a reaction. I vaccinated Norman each year up until he died at age 13.
I have my fears and worries but I also have the fact that Kobi was also vaccinated yearly, for everything except bordetella (since he was never boarded), and every 3 years for rabies. He also got the Lepto with his combo every year. There was never an inkling of an issue with him. So you are right about things being tailored to the individual…where they live and what they do. The only thing that bothered me, and I’ll be writing more about it, is the fact that our vet thought Kobi might have Lepto before he died. He did not, but it bothered me that he thought he could even though he had been vaccinated for it yearly right up until the time he died (of natural causes).
So grateful to Doodle Doc. She’s very cautious about vaccinations and will always discuss what and why she gives and/or omits from the boys lives. I have never witnessed any reactions and I trust her completely. Vaccinations are becoming more and more the topic of conversation – much like the maintenance drugs constantly prescribed to humans. Thanks – look forward to the series on this subject!
It sounds like you have a wonderful vet, and that is SO important!
This is definitely a hot topic, with so much information out there, that’s why I knew I wasn’t going to be able to cover it in just one post.
Thankfully, none of my dogs — past or present — have ever had a reaction to their vaccinations.
I do remember, though, that Shadow’s littermate (Emma) did sometime after her amputation surgery. I remember wondering why Beth & Tom’s vet even recommended giving Emma a vaccine less than a year after her osteosarcoma diagnosis. I would have seriously questioned it, personally. Thankfully, it was a mild reaction and she was fine the next day. And it wasn’t the cancer that took Emma, but renal failure due to all the arthritis meds she was on to ease the arthritis in her remaining rear leg.
We are seriously questioning vaccinating Sheba even though as far as we know, she has no cancer in her now. But she could and that concerns me…I want her immune system to be able to focus on fighting any more cancer that might show up. It’s something we’ll be discussing with our vet for sure, since she is due for rabies this year.
We have very different Vaccines here we have no Lyme apparently (but a hot topic regarding humans actually) we have no rabies either..we vacc for the most important things as puppies and kittens with updates on these yearly..Canine Cough or as it was once called Kennel cough is only added to vacc’s if boarding a dog . Heartworm tablets are used but we used to get a yearly vaccine for the boys, but our vets have now said the environment we live in here is not a problem for this and that with reactions including deaths in the USA they would not recommend Heartworm vaccs unless we lived in the tropics…we have never had a vacc reaction wth the dogs at all ..the girls have been fine too although every now and then one may have a bot of an upset tummy one year and the next year not…a very interesting topic indeed..but cannot help as like i said our countries have very different diseases to deal with..at the moment un vacc’d dogs are dying and gettting very ill around the country from Parvo…:( an putbreak that has been happening for the last few months .
It definitely sounds like things are a lot different over there, Bev, although parvo is one of the very important vaccines here. I’m not aware of any vaccines here for heartworm, it’s usually just the pills that we get. Kennel cough is common I think because so many dogs get boarded or go to day care or dog parks here. But that’s another one that is an issue…Luke was vaccinated for that as a puppy and two days after he got home with us he came down with it. It was easily treatable and the other dogs never got it. That’s another I’ll be writing more about. Thanks for sharing what you do over there too though, it’s very interesting to see the differences.
I think that some of the things you’ve pointed out here happens quite often. As someone who’s helped vaccinate 100s of cats and dogs, the things that happened with the dogs are very “normal”. And by that I just mean they happen kind of often. I doubt the vaccine had anything to do with the kidney failure in Concha, but who knows… I can see why you question it. I’ve just never seen that happen before. We used to to give smaller dogs DHPP (no L) only, because they are more sensitive to Lepto reactions. Lepto is rampant here though, and one day a small chihuahua that was a regular patient at our clinic got the disease. After that, we used DHLPP all the time unless the patient had a previous reaction. We didn’t use a Lyme vaccine, because we don’t have that here so I don’t have much experience with it. Also, the vaccine that seemed to make dogs the itchiest right after administering was injectable Bordatella. The only vaccination I really care about getting for Shiner at her age is Lepto. And rabies because I have to. This will be an interesting series to follow!
I agree, Ann, that it may not be likely that’s what happened to Concha. But I also wonder how often things like that could happen but never get reported or the connection is never made.
I would get Lepto if it was a big issue in our area. My only problem with that is that it’s similar to a flu shot for humans…the vaccine they get may not cover all strains of the disease (the same with Bordetella). I’ll get into that more in my next post…but our vet thought Kobi might have Lepto when he was sick, and he was our only dog that had consistently been vaccinated for it!
We had a scare last year when Haley got her annual DHPP along with her 3-yr rabies vaccine. Fifteen minutes after leaving the vet’s office Haley had a severe allergic reaction and we had to rush her back for treatment for the reaction. She broke out in hives and was throwing herself on her side in the back of our vehicle while madly chewing on her feet.
She has had all these vaccines before without any reactions, but the vaccines can come from different manufacturers which also could be an issue. We’re definitely not doing multiple vaccines at one visit again.
I’m looking forward to the future posts in this series.
That had to have been so frightening! I’m just glad she’s OK. I suppose like with people, an allergy can develop later too. But there are different types of vaccines as well that can have different ingredients in them other than the antibodies themselves; as well as from different manufacturers as you said.
I’ve been thinking a lot about vaccines too – lots of press will do that. Since Jack and Maggie are both seniors I do worry about their immune systems but I also wonder whether they need all of this medication continually.
I plan to cover the topic, but I do especially feel that senior dogs don’t need all the vaccines, if they’ve been getting them all of their lives.
Mom never took her cats to the vet years ago either. With us dogs, she always trusted our vets, but when we found our current vet a few years ago, she asked why we had so many vaccinations and helped us sort out what we needed and didn’t need and also explained why she doesn’t like to give those combo shots. None of us have ever had a bad reaction, and we would like to keep it that way. You can’t just blindly do what a vet tells you, you do need to research things a bit yourself to make an informed decision.
You are so right, Emma, and for a long time we did just blindly believe what our vet told us. He is great in many ways, but this is definitely one area he could do better. But he at least listens to my concerns, answers all questions, and respects our decisions. I think we spent one visit one time talking on this subject for about 1/2 hour (no one was waiting for him!).
It sounds like you have found a very good vet.
Haha and here I posted all about vaccines today too. Thunder did get his 3 year DHPP-L on Sunday. It made me sad that it is probably his last since he will be 12 when it is next due and if he is still with us, we will probably not have him vaccinated at that time. I guess it depends on whether he is still hunting as to whether he will get Lepto.
I know of a dog from Alaska where there is no lepto who came to Colorado and did some hunt testing and developed lepto. The dog had never had the lepto vaccine because it was not really needed in Alaska. The dog almost died from it so that is why I say that if we hunt or hunt test the dogs, they get lepto.
We do not give Lymes. I have heard of many bad reactions to that one and they have a good treatment for the disease. We use a flea/tick preventative instead. There are way more scary tick borne diseases than Lymes imo. We guard against those.
One of Freighter’s littermates had a reaction to his first lepto vaccine. The dog was south and his owner had it done really early imo so maybe that was part of the cause of the reaction. We spoke at length to our vet about it and he gave Freighter a shot of Benadryl at no charge prior to his first lepto vaccine. We also waited around a bit after but he had no reaction. I don’t think Freighter’s littermate has had an issue since.
We do not stack vaccines so if Thunder had needed his Rabies this year we would have come back in a couple of weeks. Our vet will also do titers if we want, but that is no guarantee of immunity (people think it is but it is only information and sometimes it is wrong information), so we take our chances with the vaccines that we think our dogs need.
Thanks so much for joining the hop. I look forward to the next installment.
GMTA, right? 🙂
We had also decided the girls would be done with vaccines now that they’re over 10 (Rabies for Sheba is still being debated).
Our vet had also recommended we got Lepto for the dogs if we would be traveling to areas where it’s more common. I totally agree with you about Lyme and I don’t think we’ll be doing that one anymore either.
I’m glad to hear you split up your vaccines as well. What you said about titers is exactly what our vet old us, though he left it up to us whether we wanted to do it for Cricket. I’ll get into that more in future posts.
My late cat, Zoey, had a bad reaction to a combination of shots at one point. She laid under the bed and growled if I tried to touch her for 2 days after. Thank God she got better and was herself again (a cat that NEVER growled or objected to attention). So the next time she needed shots I had a long discussion about it with my vet (a new vet) and she was given separate shots on separate days, and we opted to skip one entirely, since she was an indoor cat. Not sure which one we skipped. But that did seem to help. She had no reaction, whatsoever. Thanks for bringing this up. I think it’s a great thing to discuss.
I’m glad that splitting up Zoey’s vaccines and skipping one solved her issues. I think splitting them up can be a big help too, it just didn’t seem to work for Cricket. It’s so scary to see them like that and also to have to wait it out and hope they’re going to be OK. But I’m so glad Zoey came out of that fine.
Thank you for adding this to the blog hop. Vaccines are one of my hot topics. I am not anti-vaccine, in fact I believe vaccine saves so many lives. I do however feel we over vaccinate in this country, not just our pets but our children as well. I think research (and titers) prove the vaccines last longer than we are told. I also will never do a combo vaccine and if my guys are due for two vaccines in one year, I will have one and then wait a couple of weeks.
While neither of my dogs have had a reaction (besides sleepiness) from a vaccine, Sampson had a hard lump for a long time after one of his first vaccines.
I’m looking forward to the rest of this series.
That lump would have made me nervous, but I’m glad nothing came of it.
I also agree that we over-vaccinate. We also split up the vaccines most of the time by 3 weeks, though we do still use the combo shot, but without the lepto. I think we’re going to skip the Lyme this year too, but Lyme and Lepto are definitely two topics I’ll be writing about in future posts.
I’m looking forward to your other posts about this! Vaccines are one of my hot topics. I’m in a weird position though. As a vet tech I have to recommend all of these vaccines, but for my own dogs, I only titer and do Rabies as required. I’m going to try to get a Rabies exemption when Buster is due since he has had a seizure and has allergies galore.
I find it odd that your clinic vaccinated for all of those at once though. We hardly ever do more than 2 vaccines at one time. We also don’t recommend doing the combined DHPP/Lepto vaccine because we find it isn’t as effective as the separate vaccines. Weird how geological location can make things so different.
Can’t wait to read your other posts!
I think you’re right, because I think annual vaccines all at once is pretty much the norm around here. Though I imagine we could find a vet that did it differently if we tried.
Our vet did willingly sign a rabies exemption for Cricket, even though he felt it wasn’t that risky to give her the vaccine. He also doesn’t see the need for splitting them up, but he accepts our decision to do so.
We haven’t experienced any bad reactions yet either, but I can understand what you mean. So many questions, and so much different conflicting info out there, it makes it very difficult!
ღ husky hugz ღ frum our pack at Love is being owned by a husky!
It seems to be that way with everything….I suppose it’s the one downfall to having access to so much information through the internet.
I’m glad you haven’t had any issues!
We haven’t had any bad reactions to vaccines. But we did have problems with the tests for the pet passport – it requires a rabies vaccination followed by a blood test at a specific interval afterwards. We had to repeat the vaccinations and our vet said it was happening in a lot of cases – he felt they had the interval wrong for the test.
Oh no, that’s not good. That’s what happens when the government gets involved with these things, and they’re not really well informed. If they have the vaccine, that seems like it should be enough….but then they have to test as well to be sure it worked? That seems like overkill.
It’s not easy to find the answers,there are so much questions … but I try to do my best… I agree with you for Moses, I think the vacc. could be the activator…
We have our vet appointment tomorrow and I hope all goes well, I try to avoid combination vaccine, I always ask for single shots, fortunately our vet makes it possible with ordering the single vaccine just for us… maybe he thinks I’m a bellyacher, but I feel better that way
I hope Easy’s appointment went well! I think you are doing the right thing asking for individual vaccines. You can’t go wrong with that really. My vet thinks I worry too much, but he respects the decisions we make anyway and at least understands.