Leptospirosis killed my dog - Page 3

I buy mine directly from my vet but it is available here.  http://www.dogvaccine4less.com/cgi-bin/hw4l6/rtl/phd.cgi?Autoincrement=000459&display_related=Yes

My sincere condolences to the original poster on the loss of Rico.

Most folks here know I'm a PhD student and that my research area involves Detroit. I can verify Judy P.'s comment about the increased prevalence of lepto in Detroit which is believed to be related to exposure to infected rats which have proliferated due to the thousands of abandoned properties. You can read more about it here and here. For the record, I choose to vaccinate my dogs for lepto since they have a high risk lifestyle - lots of standing water and potential exposure to infected cow, rat, dog, and raccoon urine.

There is a geographic difference in opinion, it seems. I can't find a vet around here who recommends vaccinating for it. They say the effectiveness is so poor and the duration of "immunity" (if it even works) is so short that the dogs would have to be bombarded with combo shots at least twice per year which is not in the dog's best interest. My neighbor's dog died from the vaccine. 

My vet won't use the vaccine either, because of side effects.

I agree with Jenni - that we are seeing regional differences. The vet practice that I go to uses a minimal vaccination protocol but they recommend the lepto vaccine due to the number of infected dogs they treat annually. It's best to have a conversation with your vet and be mindful of your environment (ie. are you surrounded by abandoned buildings?); keep in mind that there have been advances in the vaccine since 2010 so be sure you are reading current information.

I was told a while back it only covers the dogs against lepto for about 3 months.??

Beau just got his DHLLP booster two days ago. Doing just fine.

Jenni, what size dog was your neighbor's and how long ago was it? 

Which Pets are likely to have Vaccination Reactions?

In October 2005, a study by Moore et al was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association in which over 1 million canine medical records in over 350 separate animal hospitals were reviewed. In this study, approximately one in 250 dogs had some sort of vaccination reaction, which translated to 13 reactions for every 10,000 doses of vaccine given.

The group at greatest risk for reaction were small breed young adult (age 1-3 years) neutered male dogs.  As a dog's size increased, the risk of vaccination reaction dropped. Not surprisingly, the more vaccines were given at one time, the higher the risk of reaction. Some vaccine doses include vaccine against multiple organisms. These are called multivalent vaccines and include the basic distemper-parvo vaccine for dogs and some Bordetella vaccines. Since giving more vaccines at once is associated with increased risk of reaction, one might expect that the use of multivalent vaccines would also increase the risk of reaction, but surprisingly this was not found to be the case. Most reactions occur the same day as the vaccine is given.

http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=A&A=527

In many areas where the winter temp is below freezing even during the day, lepto is unlikely during the winter. So for these areas it is best to vaccinate in the spring, so even a 9 month duration of immunity is enough.

"My neighbor's dog died from the vaccine."


Yes, and the original poster's dogs died from the disease, because by the time it was diagnosed, it had done too much damage. 

Is either end-result worse than the other?

If there's risk of exposure to the disease, the decision not to vaccinate needs to be made as an educated choice on a case by case basis--not just a blanket abandonment of an immunization because some dogs have adverse reactions.  The truth is that in the grand scheme of things, when you tot up the number of dogs that received lepto vaccinations and then pull out the sub-set which had adverse responses of ANY kind [I'll be generous and not just limit it to death], that sub-set is statistically insignificant.  It's just not even close to being as 'dangerous' to use as some try to make it out to be.

My dogs always have been, and always will be, vaccinated against leptospirosis, because I feel the benefit outweighs any risk.

My cattle are also vaccinated against lepto, BTW--because the disease has 'adverse effects' on that species, too.

"If there's risk of exposure to the disease, the decision not to vaccinate needs to be made as an educated choice on a case by case basis--not just a blanket abandonment of an immunization because some dogs have adverse reactions."

Good post Hexe! Whenever I see email signatures proudly proclaiming "vaccine free" (common in raw feeding groups), I always wonder if the poster can clearly articulate why he/she chose not to vaccinate their pets for specific illnesses instead of applying a blind, blanket rule of "all vaccines bad". Of course, I feel the same way about the folks who shrilly claim that there is only one "true" model of raw feeding too.

I better go have another cup of coffee because I'm sounding cranky.