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Keep Our Families Safe: Consumer News For Families
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Keep Four-Legged Friends Safe

[Column 356, September 26, 2005] | Archived Columns

By Ken Suggs*

Many people consider their cats and dogs to be family members. And why wouldn't we? After all, they live with us, eat with us, listen to us (most of the time), sleep on our beds, and even vacation with us. We care for them and want to protect them from harm. One aspect of pet protection is making sure our four-legged friends are current on their vaccines.

Pet vaccination is a bit of a complicated issue. The bottom line is that pets should be vaccinated, but there are some gray areas where veterinary practices differ on their recommendations.

Some practices have decreased the number of vaccines they administer because of studies that have shown greater duration of immunity than originally documented. Other practices have witnessed incidents of cancerous tumor formation (in cats) at the site of certain injections. Still, other veterinarians advise against certain vaccinations because they may trigger an auto-immune disease (in which the pet's immune system attacks healthy systems within the body) or make an existing auto-immune disease worse.

"Each veterinary hospital has responded to this information a bit differently," says Peter Farrell, D.V.M. at the Del Ray Animal Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. "There is no longer any consensus on the single best vaccination protocol."

Dr. Farrell's practice has seen cases of injection-related tumor formation (fibrosarcoma) in cats. But, as Wendy C. Brooks, D.V.M. and educational director at VeterinaryPartner.com, points out, the incidence of fibrosarcoma is between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000 vaccines administered. In other words, it's rare, considering that a cat typically receives about 45 vaccinations (not including the kitten shots) in a 15-year life span.

"Vaccine-induced fibrosarcomas seem to be a feline problem only," writes Dr. Brooks for VeterinaryPartners.com. "Dogs are unaffected by this phenomenon."

Dogs have their own issues—like distemper and other diseases that vaccinations have nearly eradicated. Distemper is a disease that attacks a dog's respiratory tract and brain. Before a vaccine was available—starting in the 1950s—distemper would routinely wipe out an entire community's dogs. Cases of distemper still crop up, especially in animal rescues/shelters and in pet stores.

Even though some veterinarians are reducing the number of vaccines they give annually, it's imperative to vaccinate against lethal diseases like distemper.

"We may see a resurgence in diseases like distemper that we haven't seen in 20 years because some people are hesitant to vaccinate their pets at all, or because they think the disease just doesn't happen anymore," says Dr. Farrell.

What's a pet owner to do? First, ask your veterinarian what the "core" (necessary) vaccinations are for your cat or dog.

The University of California-Davis Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital (UCDVMTH) has a set of guidelines for canine and feline core vaccines. Its guidelines are based on recent studies and recommendations made by national veterinary task forces and are available at www.vmth.ucdavis.edu.

Even if your pet only needs a booster shot every three years, don't forget to bring her in every year for a check-up.

"Pets age much faster than humans, and coming in once every three years is like a person not seeing a doctor for 20 years. Simply unacceptable," says Dr. Farrell.

Your dog and cat would agree.

*Ken Suggs, president of the American Association for Justice, is a partner in the Columbia, SC, law firm of Janet, Jenner & Suggs.