naturalpet
PET VACCINE ALTERNATIVES
Natural Steps to Nurture Immunity by Shawn Messonnier
W
ith pets, as with kids, vaccine safety and necessity are likely concerns.
While holistic veterinarians tend to minimize the use of vaccines, their strongest stance is against unnecessary
vaccinations. The point is to immunize only when it’s needed by individual patients while maximizing natural immunity.
In the late 1970s, amid the
discovery of the canine parvo virus, vets saw many puppies under 4 months of age suffer from this mysterious disease and die or be euthanized. Once a vaccine was made, we rarely saw pets dying from the parvo virus or parvoviral infection. So, in certain cases, vaccines can be life-saving. However, unnecessary and multiple simultaneous vaccines can also be life-taking, which
doctors rarely mention. The truth is that only minimal vaccines are needed for dogs and cats over the course of a pet’s life. No pet needs all of the vaccines that are currently manufactured, and none needs vaccines every six to 12 months. Pets do need veterinary checkups once or twice a year to screen for diseases affecting the liver, heart, kidneys, lungs and gastrointestinal and urinary systems, as well as cancer. Blood and urine testing, including blood testing for undiagnosed cancer, is vital, easy and inexpensive (every six months for pets 5 years and older and annually for those that are younger). A good protocol is akin to that
developed by Dr. Jean Dodds, founder of Hemopet, of Garden Grove, Calif., a holistic veterinarian and an expert in animal vaccination and immunology. Her system involves administering limited vaccines to puppies and kittens based on their individual needs, and not more often than every three weeks for those younger than 8 weeks. Following this course, by 4 months of age the pet has been injected with four to six vaccines, compared to double to triple the amount supported by vaccine manufacturers and administered by breeders and most conventional doctors. Such a judicious, limited vaccine protocol offers protection against the diseases that are the most lethal to
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