Thursday, May 21, 2009

Poppy's Final Puppy Visit

Poppy has her last official puppy visit last night. I gave her a final distemper/parvo booster and her rabies vaccine, these will now be good for 1 year. I am happy to report that she is feeling fine this morning and did not develop any signs of a vaccine reaction. In addition, we drew pre-anesthestic bloodwork for her spay surgery that I will perform in July. We will also attend our last puppy elementary class tonight. For a moment I was feeling like she was all grown up, until I noticed her enthusiastically gnawing on one of my shoes...


As a final word on the much debated topic of vaccination I would like to stress the importance of keeping your pet up to date on the rabies vaccine. This applies to both cats and dogs, even if your kitty never visits the great outdoors. Apart from the fact that rabies is one hundred percent fatal and required by law consider this: if for whatever reason your pet bites someone and they are not current on their vaccine, that person can demand that your pet be euthanized for rabies testing. I have had people say "my pet would never bite anyone" and for the most part I am sure that is true, until something happens where the pet is painful and ends up biting someone unintentionally. My point is, you never know what is going to happen and the potential consequences for an unvaccinated rabies suspect are so dire that keeping your pet up to date is incredibly important.

1 comment:

  1. A dog who is defending him/herself in a rare attack, who magically learns to leap out of her fenced enclosure (my 15 year old deaf and 80% blind cocker spaniel is a fantastic example) - our pets may come into contact with rabies when we least expect it.

    Although we'd love to protect them from potential vaccination reactions, I feel that disease itself (and exposure thereto) is far more present a danger to our fuzzy loves than the risk of a vaccination reaction. Veterinarians (especially 24 hour ones like Friendship) can manage immunization reactions pretty handily when they do occur.

    Loving the photos of Poppy, please keep them up.

    ooxx

    Karen, Ladybug, Jellybean + co.

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