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Interesting piece about over-vaccinations and our pets

Thank you for the link, Trisha! What a wonderful web site she has, and I've bookmarked it for more reading later.

Our dog's breeder had warned me about the Lepto shot, which I always accepted along with the entire cocktail menu of vaccines for our previous dogs. After bringing our 1st Cav home in March, I consequently did a lot of research on the internet. That was a real eye-opener and empowered me to tell our vet "no thanks". The things I learn! Having the internet is really helpful, too.

I plan to do the titers for Sophie, when the vet wants to give us the full round of shots. I know it's their cash cow, and if they put up a fight I may offer them the same $$$ for the titers. I do not trust Big Pharma ... at all.... whether for dogs or humans.... but I digress.

I read all their pages on allergies just now and learned a few new things. Since Sophie already has terrible skin allergy troubles that began at 7 months, and she's been on Temaril-P for over 6 weeks, I've felt that a puppy this young shouldn't be having these problems already. Her breeder won't respond to my voice mail message, nor an email inquiry about this, so I'm on my own here. I am convinced the allergies are inherited, because they started while she's so young.

Our Shih Tzu's skin troubles began in his old age, around 11 or 13 years, and one can expect that as the immune system wears down with old age. (I'm having a bit of that, myself, with more allergy problems. :rolleyes:)
 
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I plan to do the titers for Sophie, when the vet wants to give us the full round of shots. I know it's their cash cow, and if they put up a fight I may offer them the same $$$ for the titers. I do not trust Big Pharma ... at all.... whether for dogs or humans.... but I digress.

The only vaccines my dogs have received are parvo at 14 weeks, distemper at 16 weeks (1 single vaccine, not multiple) and rabies at 9 months. They are 1 1/2 and 2 and have not received another vaccine. I choose to titer instead of re-vaccinate. They will not get lepto or bordatella.

I found that the titer tests were more expensive than the vaccines at my vet. I think it was $75 for parvo + $75 for distemper titer...Multiply that by 2 dogs and that's $300! Instead, I asked for the blood serum sample and sent it in myself to Hemopet in California. For a total of $100 I had both titer tests plus the heartworm antigen...they both came up fine for all tests. I gave my vet a copy of the results, and they were great. They didn't give me a hard time at all about 1) not vaccinating and 2) asking for them to draw the blood (I think they charged me like $10) and having the tests done elsewhere. I like Hemopet, they are very reasonable (www.hemopet.org) and sent the paperwork back very quickly...
 
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