Annual vaccinations keep pets healthy

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By Dr. John Koch

Question: Is it really that necessary to have your pets vaccinated every year?

Answer: The best way to insure the quality and quantity of your pet's life is to prevent disease. It is also far less expensive to prevent disease than it is to treat it.

Every year, particularly in the summer, canine viral enteritis runs rampant killing many young dogs. The most virulent of these viruses, parvo and corona viruses, are preventable with vaccine. Respiratory disease in cats, especially kittens, has been epidemic in proportions for several years now. Most of these are preventable with vaccine. Missouri veterinarians have been warned that there is large outbreak of distemper in raccoons and that is likely to spill over into our dog population. Leptospirosis has recently flared up in Canada and is considered a real threat to spread into the United States.

Public health officials are concerned that Missouri is overdue for an outbreak of rabies. They point out that the incidence of this cyclic disease has been relatively low for several years. Typically there is a flare up of rabies in the wildlife population every so many years. When there is not much publicity in the newspapers and television about rabies, people become complacent and fail to get their pets vaccinated. When unvaccinated pets come into contact with rabid wildlife such as raccoons, foxes, skunks and bats, trouble is the result. This cycle has repeated itself numerous times over the decades.

Some veterinarians have been advocating running annual vaccination titers in pets and then vaccinating on an as needed basis. Vaccination titers measure the amount of protection a pet has against a particular disease. If the titer is high then they don't vaccinate that year. This is a logical, but expensive approach. Doing a complete set of vaccination titers can easily run several hundred dollars.

The bottom line is the least expensive way of keeping your pets healthy: bring them in once each year for a complete physical exam and vaccinations.

Dr. Koch is a Cape Girardeau veterinarian.