I would not recommend no vaccines for dogs who are fed kibble. However, for dogs who are fed a raw diet, not doing vaccines at all may be a viable option.

Parvo is a disease in puppies. If you talk to vets, many if not most, will tell you that they have not treated an adult dog with parvo. Now, some will say that is because they have had their puppy vaccines etc. But, many will tell you that is not the reason, you just don't see it in adult dogs.

Distemper is also considerd a puppy disease.

For those who want to be 'covered' by vaccines (and this is not a guarentee with vaccines!) I only recommend (but this is just my opinion...but based on vets recommendations ) 1 single parvo vaccine at the age of 14 wks. 4 weeks later one singe distemper vaccine. That should be sufficient. I do beleive in this and will go as far as give puppy buyers their money back if they loose a pup from me from either one of these diseases before they give the vaccines. (if they are continueing the raw diet).

As far as human vaccines go. I work with children with disabilities, and people have no idea how many children develop a mental handicap following vaccinations. Course, this is not all children, but way more than you think.

I also beleive and think that the biggist culprit in damage done to animals and children is the all in one vaccine or combo vaccines. Just think about it for a few minutes. We inject 7, 5, etc different virus's into the body at one time and ask the immune system to 'cope' with it and come up with immunity to each one. That would NEVER happen in 'real' life! Are we really surprised that we are seeing so many autoimmune problems in dogs and people?

Okay, I am a newbie here (a couple of months) and I do want to add something here...hopefully not opening a whole new can of worms.

When talking about puppies vax being given please take into consideration if the Dam is either current on vax or has a good current titre. Pups do get some natural immunity from them and that does give them a great start. If you are dealing with a questionable breeder (and I don't think any of us here would be) that really needs to be taken into consideration.

Jerri

My dog is due for his first yearly boosters. I went to a holistic vet who said he uses nosodes. Does anyone have any input on them?I dont know if I should go with them or just wait two more years and just get a rabies vaccine then?

When and how to use nosodes is controversal and the opinion differs on them depending on the practicioner.

Generally speaking, most homeopaths would not recommend them. Nosodes would be used for specific issues/ problems but would not be used the tradiontional way a vaccine would be used.

Some 'holistic' vets seem to use them in the same way a vaccine would be used. It would *seem* that in Europe nosodes are used a bit more in this way.

At what age did you do vaccines and which ones?

I have only used nosodes once and it was in the homeopathic sense, not as a vaccine substitute. From what I have read and heard, my tendency is to go with this thinking.

You could consider doing titers instead of nosodes and see where your dogs immunity is at?

Just some general/clarifying info in regards to vaccines.

Maternally transfered/confered imuunity is extremely important/beneficial to the pup, but has not been shown to provide long term immunity to the pup, regardless of diet type.

Combo vaccines: you are not injecting multiple live viruses into the dog at one time. Individual suppliers of vaccines will differ, but most used some modified (dramatically reduced viral viablity), some killed, and some synthetic viral components. Multiple challenges to the immune system, i.e. those that cause both a specific antigen based response as well as a general response, have been shown to produce higher levels of immunity.

As to Aiko's comment that multiple challenges would never happen to a dog in real life...that is all that ever happens unless someone is specifically trying to infect your dog with a single viral entity. We all swim in one large microbial pool. On a daily bases our immune systems respond to hundreds of bacterial and viral threats.

To clarify my opinion on yearly boosters: Do I think that yearly vaccines are necessary for all animals - No. Do I personally feel that it is worth the risk to not use yearly boosters until the animals immune system has fully matured (which is later than when the animals reach full sexual maturity) - No. I feel that one of the reasons people have been able to not vaccinate and not see a problem, is that the vast majority of the dogs in this country are vaccinated. You can see the same thing in humans. If you choose not to vaccinate your child against polio the likelyhood of your child contracting polio is still extremely remote, because the vast majority of people are vaccinated against it. The same is applicable with small pox.

If it were not for the ability to use titers to confirm continuing immunity I'd agree with you, Chad--not vaccinating is not worth the risk, at least for the major diseases. But since I can check immunity without vaccination, that's the way I'll go. After all, the first principle of medicine is "primum non nocere" (first, do no harm), and there is always the possibility of a side effect from a vaccine--esp., I understand, from some of the newer ones.

One correction, though. I believe polio has a non-human environmental vector, where smallpox does not. As a result, there is, bioterror aside, _no_ chance of contracting smallpox at this time. The disease is extinct except in two vaults, and perhaps in a biowarfare storage facility in Russia. But that last possibility is causing a lot of sleepless nights in the U.S. government. One Army simulation of the effect of a single person infected with smallpox in Kansas predicted several hundred thousand deaths in the U.S. and millions worldwide. Fortunately, smallpox vaccination works after exposure, and the vaccine is easy to produce.

Hi Dave,
I agree that if you are willing to have the immuno-competency of your dog checked yearly after initial vaccinations, you can avoid the potential pitfalls of not using boosters.
You are also correct about polio, however it does not replicate itself as efficiently outside human hosts. Therefore, by preventing polio infection in the majority of the populus the overall polio load will be dramatically reduced, reducing the risk of unvaccinated people from contracting the disease. I was looking for a vaccination program were majority action could prevent minority infection.

I try very hard not to think of the ramifications of any terrorists nuts getting hold of small pox.

Your dog/pup in the 'real' world is not going to come across distemper, parvo, corno, hepititis, (and the 'rest' of the combo) vaccine at one spicific time. In fact the likelyhood of your dog/pup coming into contact with one maybe 2 of these in it's lifetime is very remote. (depending on where you live). Combo vaccines are the BIGGEST culprit and immune destroyer (in the long run) of our dogs lives.

However, I would agree with chad that " On a daily bases our immune systems respond to hundreds of bacterial and viral threats" ....

and the best defense against these is a healthy immune system! You cannot have a healthy immune system when it is bombarded with multiple combo vaccines multiple times in puppyhood and yearly there afterwards.

I have scads of information , documentation, studies on the topic. All cases of Polio since the 1960's (admitted by the founder of the polio vaccine before congress in the U.S.) were caused by the polie vaccine.

Here is a bit of 'information'...

Remember that millions of people between 1950 and 1970 were injected with polio vaccines containing simian virus 40 (SV-40) transferred from
contaminated monkey kidney cells used to culture the vaccine. It is
impossible to remove animal viruses from vaccine cultures. You are reminded that SV-40, the 40th virus to be discovered in simian tissue, is a cancer-causing virus.

Immunization programs against influenza, measles, mumps and polio are in fact seeding humans with RNA and forming proviruses which become latent for long periods in throughout the body, only to re-awaken later on. Post-polio syndrome is a good example of this problem. Other examples may include the so-called mesenchymal and collegen diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and lupus erythmatosis, where antibodies are formed by the immune system against the person's own tissues - tissues which have been impregnated with foreign genetic material. According to a special issue of Postgraduate Medicine in May 1962, "although the body generally will not make antibodies against its own tissues, it appears that slight modification
of the antigenic character of tissues may cause it to appear foreign to the immune system and thus a fair target for antibody production." Two years later in 1964, studies were conducted on the polyoma virus, a
tumor-producing DNA virus. It was discovered that the persistent genetic DNA material in the polyoma virus brought about malignant transformations in hamster embryo cell cultures. This was reported in the November 23, 1964 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

*Depending on where you live* has got to be the key. I had a client lose a pup to distemper not long ago. And parvo is quite rampant in many communities here in SoCal. Lepto also turns up rather regularly.

Now I am not AT ALL for yearly vaccines, but....

Originally posted by Shandar:
All cases of Polio since the 1960's (admitted by the founder of the polio vaccine before congress in the U.S.) were caused by the polie vaccine.


This is not the complete truth and is very misleasing. It irks me that this kind of misinformation abounds on the net and people believe it as gospel.