Here's my theory on breeders who do not vaccinate:
I think it's pretty obvious that vaccinations interfere with natural selection. Now that's wonderful, if it's your puppy (or child) who is not 'naturally selected' to die. BUT...
In nature, those healthy animals with strong immune systems who fought the little wigglies all by themselves (without synthetic assistance in the form of vaccinations) will live to breed and pass that strength on to their offspring.
Those who have a sub par immune system will generally die before they are breeding age and therefore, that weakness will not be passed onto their offspring...and it will benefit the whole species.
Vaccinations can mask a faulty or weak immune system in an animal, by allowing them to survive when without it they might have died; there is enough empirical evidence out there to support the fact that some lives are saved by vaccinations.
However, there aren't vaccinations for EVERY thing that a weak immune system will lose a fight to.
The upshot is that, through vaccination, you have maybe saved a dog that would have died of Parvo, but if his immune system is weak, something else will either kill him or he will be plagued with constant health issues. And if you have an already healthy animal, then all you're doing is taxing his immune system without cause.
Even diseases that cause an epidemic and kill off lots (or even most) of the animals are usually a cleansing of the species. Those that survive have either spectacular immune systems or carry a rare mutation that makes them immune to that specific disease that they will live to pass on to their offspring...again, making the species stronger.
There will always be a battle between the "parasites and the hosts", with each trying to evolve into improved versions of each themselves. This competition is a GOOD thing ultimately, even if it means that many die along the way. Those that survive are stronger.
We try to ignore this with people, of course, because of medical ethics, morals, love, etc. But before the age of modern medicine, natural selection happened with people, too. And honestly, we're a world of sick people...everything from cancer to widespread allergies to drug-resistant diseases to an ever increasing population.
I would be very interested to talk to breeders who have a no vaccination policy AND to hear from anybody who has tried it and lost pups (assuming there are any).
DISCLAIMER: I am not a dog breeder. But I wanted to be, until I realized how much I didn't know about it. So I did (and am doing) a ton of research on this, and I have also talked to breeders who do and don't vaccinate.
In dog breeding, choosing not to vaccinate pups may mean that you lose some pups along the way. But that's as it should be, IMO. That means that the remaining pups are strong and healthy and likely to live a healthy life AND produce healthier pups that the ones you might have 'saved' by vaccination.
If vaccinations suddenly ceased to exist and no dogs were vaccinated, ever, there would of course be epidemics. That happens in all unregulated populations. But again, the surviving dogs would be the strong ones. And the problem is that, even fantastic breeders who are not in it for the money would still find themselves losing money during an epidemic. But epidemics are rare.
Vaccinating the breeding dogs, or vaccinating puppies, may keep the pups alive long enough to be sold. But would those dogs be as overall healthy as the ones who made it through the immune-challenge of puppyhood unassisted? And there's always a risk of losing pups, with vaccinations or without.
Also, when the majority of a population of animals is vaccinated, they tend to lose any existing natural resistance to those diseases and can fall to mutations of the diseases that the vaccines don't cover: A body (human or animal) will often times stop producing something that is supplied through artificial means. A strong natural protection is the best defense against disease mutations in the long run.
So, my money is on the two breeding dogs, properly exposed to the world, that have lived to breeding age with NO vaccinations.
It's more likely that they have a strong immune system that will protect them not only from the diseases that we have vaccinations for, but for other things that we don't have the technology to protect them from.
And this doesn't even touch on the illnesses that are CAUSED by vaccinations!
Sorry this is so long...it's been a research subject of mine for a while now and these are the conclusions that I have come to so far, and what I personally believe to be true. A year or two ago, I would have been on the other side of the fence. My major in college was in microbiology, and I've been training dogs for over a decade so this topic is especially interesting to me because it combines my two interests.
Carbon
Re: Requesting no vaccines from a breeder?
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- a few kennels that I really like are overseas though (good one in France - am I completely crazy??!!)... bigger hassle, I know, but it would be a real treat to have a dog from different lines. The vaccination issue is probably a little different in each European country, PLUS, in order to travel, the little one will most likely need to have at least SOMETHING administered for legal export/import paperwork 
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