Vaccine Rant

I’ve had bad luck with vets recently, and bad luck with vaccinations. I’m not anti-vaccination, but any time you’re adding something to the body there are consequences, so I’m cautious. It does seem like there are just two sides to the story, with one side being, ‘VACCINES ARE POISON THAT CAUSE AUTISM’ and the other ‘ONLY ANTI-SCIENCE MORONS THINK VACCINES ARE HARMFUL’. And I’ve settled into a happy medium, I give the distemper/parvo puppy series until around 16 weeks and then rabies around 7-9 months, then pretty much ‘as needed’ after that.

I really don’t want my dogs to die of parvo or distemper, and I worry about what might happen if they don’t have a rabies vaccination and something happens. There are others that I’m not sure about, like lepto, which I think can be out there, but how much of a threat is it? I know I don’t worry about it with a puppy, so if I’m going to give it, it can wait as it does seem to have a lot more side effects that a puppy doesn’t need. And as to how long vaccines last … that’s another question. How many old dogs do you know getting parvo though? I know a lot of puppies, never heard of a 10 year old dog getting parvo, though I’m sure it probably happened at some point. So I go with the assumption that for a lot of dogs the puppy series will give them lifelong immunity. And I accept that I could be wrong.

So back in the day, when I first had pets (just cats at this point), I tried to be the best responsible owner. Any little thing I would take them to the vet, I gave them all the vaccinations, every year, for my indoor cats. Those cats were always sick with URIs, urinary infections, weird herpes things, overweight, growths, diabetes – you name it. I’d bring them into the vet and they’d fill them up with antibiotics, steroids and expensive veterinary foods and it was a revolving door of pet care – I knew our vets VERY WELL back then. This was back in the very early days of the internet, and after one of my cats had a ‘penisectomy’ as he had blocked so many times they couldn’t even get a catheter in any more, I was definitely looking for answers. The raw feeding movement was still very small and very fringe at that point, but they said they had the cure for a lot of the issues my cats had.

Raw feeding and anti-vaccination kind of go hand in hand, so I very nervously went down the weird ‘alternative’ medicine path. At that point my cats were are adult indoor only cats, so it wasn’t that stressful to stop vaccinating. And the results were impressive, switching to a raw diet and stopping vaccinations made a huge difference in their health. And because I wasn’t bringing them into the vet constantly any more, it meant that they weren’t being pumped full of antibiotics and steroids (which I realize are sometimes necessary, but vets often had no idea what the issue was, so they would just send me home with one or another with no compelling reason to do so). It was quite the transformation, and it quite changed how I viewed veterinary care.

I’m much more cautious now, I don’t tend to bring my animals into the vet unless I feel they really need it. Because what is the vet going to say, for the most part? If they need antibiotics or steroids, I know where to go. If they need surgery or something gets infected, I know where to go. But vets aren’t magical places of healing, their tools are limited. So, yeah, holistic health, I try to look at my animals’ health from the full spectrum and I think of going to the vet as an option that is there for the issues they are good at addressing.

I am a little nutty as I’m not one for drugs in general, I think they have their place but I try to stay far away from them if I can. I’ve been lucky in my life to only have needed one set of antibiotics, and even that threw my body for a loop. It doesn’t mean they weren’t necessary, but these things can have serious consequences, and as someone that is extremely sensitive to drugs of any kind, I’m very cautious. We do seem to live in a culture that wants to slap a drug on any condition you or your animal may have – but what about the underlying reason for the condition? We’re good at treating illnesses, we’re not so good at finding the root cause. At some point I’m sure I will get seriously sick, and I’ll be very grateful that there are medications to help – but until I need them, I’m staying far away.

Vets are interesting places, as they are trying to be profitable. I’m not saying they are not also trying to give good pet care, but I’ve worked at one – I know that yearly vaccinations/check ups is what makes the wheels turn. Get the people in, get the vaccinations, but then you can also push the deworming, teeth cleaning, flea meds, etc. Which aren’t bad things, but when I go to vet and they start pushing all this crap I know the angle they’re coming from. This last vet I’ve been trying out in Wilsonville said that my 8 month old cat needed to be dewormed FIVE TIMES in order to ‘flush his parasite load that all kittens have’. There was no fecal test or any reason whatsoever to even assume my cat has ‘parasites’, that’s just their policy. And that just seems insane to me. Same vet thinks Fig needs to be wormed monthly for the rest of her life – this vet is honestly seriously worried about parasites or they’ve found a nifty way to upsell products. I declined for both pets.

Anyway, so first there was Marvin’s rabies vaccination. That was, what, three months ago? He got sick and personality changed, different cat than he was before the vaccination. He’s back to being a little more cuddly now, but I can see why people think vaccines cause autism. Before the vaccine he was super friendly and cuddly, always looking into your eyes … and now he doesn’t. He went from being crazy about foods of all sorts to now he’ll only eat very specific types of food. It was definitely very odd, and distressing, I loved that cat – I can only hope he’ll return someday.

I did finally bite the bullet and brought him in to be neutered – at a new vet office. However, my old veterinarian from way back in the day recently moved there and I really like her, and trust her judgement. Knock on wood, I liked this vet office, they were good at communicating, kept me updated, didn’t try to push anything weird on me and seem much more modern in their pet care (they gave ongoing pain control for a cat neuter – gasp!). I’m going to give them a try, they’re about 30 minutes from me, so we’ll see how it goes. Finding a good vet that you really trust is hard.

So Marvin was neutered, which is not a super invasive surgery – and so cheap! He came home purring and happy and drugged up, and the other cats all wanted him to die. Luckily after keeping them separate for a couple days he seems to have mostly re-integrated with everyone. As long as I can keep Navarre from obsessively licking Marvin’s balls, hopefully he’ll be good to go. He was just recently starting to get more cranky with the other cats, so hopefully that will pass. And I’m also hopeful that he’ll get more cuddly and interactive again too. Fingers crossed.

So dealing with that this week, and then brought Fig in for her parvo/distemper booster this week as well. I’ve been much more proactive about making sure I’m clear that I don’t want to vaccinate for everything under the sun after my previous vet gave Aja a ridiculous cocktail when I left the room for a moment. And the vet I had been bringing Fig to had just distemper/parvo shots, which she had last time, no side effects. Until after they gave her this booster and starting talking about lepto side effects – WHY ARE YOU VACCINATING MY PUPPY FOR LEPTO? For fuck’s sake. It was a tech, she was very apologetic, but it’s not like I could take it back at that point. So, yeah, real quality vet care right there. So I left and then went up to Vancouver to teach Fig to swim – and she gets out of the car three legged. Fuck.

We actually did a little bit of swimming anyway, as I had gone all the way up there, and she did pretty good with a life jacket, but mostly just let her hang out. When she was distracted by the other dogs she was doing okay, but I think if she had been feeling herself we could have done a lot more with her.

By the time we got home that afternoon I tried to help her out of the crate and she just screamed. Extremely painful, could barely walk, obviously didn’t feel good. She ate a little, but mostly she just slept for two days. All my work getting her up to a good weight was lost, she’s all skinny again. But at least she’s feeling better now, running and jumping around. She did squeak a little playing with Navarre tonight and looked a little off on that shoulder again for a minute or two, but hopefully she’s about back to normal. Stupid lepto vaccine.

So, yeah, vaccines are a miracle of the modern age, but that doesn’t mean they are perfectly safe. And maybe that makes me one of those anti-vax nutjobs. But I’ll admit I’m much less likely to vaccinate my indoor cats for rabies now, and only lepto if I think there is a definite personal risk.