Please, please, please, please, please vaccinated your dog. Please. I beg you. If you love them. If you care about them. For your dog’s own sake, please vaccinate them.
I have heard people talking completely seriously about their concerns over giving their dogs autism from vaccinations.
Some people should be made to apologize to every tree they come across for flagrantly wasting the oxygen they so kindly provide us.
Seriously. What the hell is dog autism? I don’t know a dog out there that is able to understand social cues and most of them don’t want to look you in the eye.
You’ve never heard of it because in the industry it’s referred to as “daugtism”
My dog has ADHD (aka being a lurcher). Isn’t a dog with autism basically a cat in a more doofus body?
Okay but you know those are just stereotypes, ASDs come in all shapes and sizes, and people with ASDs often don’t display those symptoms?
It was a joke.
I’m honestly quite suspicious that people who think their dogs have autism actually just have autism themselves.
Not nice to associate autistic people with idiots like that.
Interestingly, autistics are FAR better with animals than people. Their emotions are far less convoluted, and so easier to read. A lot of autistics find they can read and connect with animals in a way they simply can’t with humans.
Temple Grandin being a terrific example.
Am asd, not how it works. Neurodivergent =/= idiot
Unrelated to the vaccine conversation: I think my dog might have dog autism, truthfully. He’s an awesome sweet weird little guy!
One time he fell in love with a tree for about a week. There was nothing in it and he would just sit and stare up into it rather than play at the dog park.
Earlier today my partner and I ran into him with his dog walker and he didn’t recognize us.
He doesn’t seem to like most petting but loves his ears gently stroked and thinks everyone else does, too. So if he likes you he will go out of his way to lick your ears. It bothers him when my hat covers mine.
If you put a blanket over his head he will lie down and fall asleep rather than try to get out from under it.
He sounds like a perfectly weird little derp. Dog tax please?
Meanwhile contaminating everything with BPA
Hot take:
Let’s say vaccines do cause autism or whatever. Is that REALLY problematic for your dog?
My dog ate something that made her vomit, then ate it again a few minutes later. Then cried because she couldn’t eat her vomit.
Let’s say vaccines do cause autism or whatever.
Let’s not.
I like that they chose a picture of a pug for this article. If these people really gave a shit about the health of their pets, they wouldn’t choose one that was bred with health problems.
To be fair, some pugs are rescues.
Good point. I already try to remember that when I see dogs with
croppeddocked tails.All of the dogs I’ve ever had have been mutts, but I only ever adopted from a rescue or a shelter. Those are the only dogs that should be adopted and breeders should be stopped. My mother bought a Chinese Crested from a breeder and I was so pissed off at her. She’s a really sweet dog, but that should not be encouraged.
I don’t know about most dog breeds, but I do know that if you buy an aussie or blue heeler for actual work (and not because they’re the ‘it’ dog of the moment, don’t even get me started on that), it’s beneficial for them to have docked tails.
They’re used for herding cattle, and otherwise they run the same risks as a superhero with a cape. Best case scenario, they get it stepped on and severely injured; worst case, they get pinned and trampled.
My pug was a stray, I gave him a home. I don’t feel badly about that. All my pugs have been rescues because people don’t understand what caring for a pug is like.
You shouldn’t feel bad. You did an awesome thing!
Here he is singing me the song of his people.
Thanks for sharing! I love it!
They really have wonderful personalities even if they shouldn’t be bred. There’s nobody funnier.
A lot of stupid dog owners out there.
Have you seen the modern fad breeds? Idiots and assholes combined, and then there’s the owners, too!
So stupid. Why would I not want to protect me dog to the best of my ability? My dog is a huge cry baby about shots. We do them, dog gets a treat. We go home.
I didn’t realize the vaccine conspiracy theory community moved on to dogs, but I guess it’s not really surprising. Follow the advice of your vet, not your weird uncle’s Facebook posts.
Heck yes. My dogs just got their vaccinations updated yesterday! Easy way to help keep them healthy and safe.
People are stupid enough to take horse dewormer instead of vaccines. Do you really expect to treat their pets any smarter?
@FlyingSquid Good read. Thoughts on the vaccinations for things like fleas, ticks, heart worms?
I didn’t know you could vaccinate against those. Are the vaccinations effective enough on their own or would you need to supplement? We give our dogs Trifexis, which seems to work really well (they hate it though). Never had a flea or a tick or any heartworm detected. Now our dogs don’t socialize with other dogs, which I’m sure helps, but I don’t think that’s the sole reason.
If my vet recommended vaccinating my dogs for those… well, I go to my vet because I trust her judgment. Or I wouldn’t go to her.
There is a seasonal medication for flea, tick, and heartworm. I just get the medication as part of my dog’s yearly checkup. It’s just a tablet I need to feed him once a month for the warm months. IDK if they are technically vaccines, but they are preventative.
Yeah, that’s how Trifexis works. Not sure if that’s what you’re using.
I think your general point stands that preventative medicines of all kinds have high value. From a technical standpoint, they are different types of medication.
Vaccines teach immune systems how to recognize and attack diseases and pathogens. These sorts of medications and treatments directly poison the parasites. They’re similar in effect in that the pets are defended against unwanted aggressors, but differ in the mechanism.
@FlyingSquid there are a few I believe. I trust my vet as well. She has always been amazing with all of my dogs and they’ve all had long, healthy, happy lives.
She mentioned ProHeart 12 for heartworm prevention. Doing research I came across the other vaccines for fleas and ticks. And a LOT of people pushing ideas on how bad they are for dogs long term. She was able to satisfy all my questions and I trust her completely, just was curious about community thoughts on it!
Fair enough. I have honestly heard nothing about them, but considering we have to buy expensive soft food and crush the Trifexis into it to get them to eat it each month, that sounds like a pretty good alternative.
@FlyingSquid You might ask your vet and see if it’s a good fit for you! Like you my dogs socialize with each other, other family members dogs - never random dogs and I’ve never really had flea or tick issues, certainly never worms. So it’s hard to speak to any efficacy but from a preventative standpoint it seemed right for us, I had a hard time with my dogs and the oral treatments as well.
I was already planning on asking her next time I brought one of them in. Thanks!
There are drugs and topical solutions that are designed to help mitigate pest/parasites in pets. They’re quite commonly available.
That’s what I use. A drug called Trifexis.
Flea, ticks and heart worm preventative measures are not vaccines since they don’t protect against a virus since fleas, tickets and heart worms are considered parasites. They use a different biological method to control than vaccines.
However you really need to get them and most importantly keep them up to date. Most need to be given monthly for chewables and injectables need to be redone every 6-months or 12-months. You’re vet will help determine what is needed
@dumples right, I should have used the word injections. My bad. I’m referring to the 12 month injection.
Easy mistake but people might be confused
Minor quibble, vaccine protect against more than just viruses. Tetanus, for example, is a bacterial infection and there is a vaccine.
53% of dog owners need a better education then.
Who thinks this? I know many many dog and cat owners, not one thinks this. Oh, are you speaking of “U.S. pet owners”?
Maybe read the article?
Nah
53% expressed “some hesitancy.” That does not mean they are anti vaccine. My vet said under almost no circumstances should we get the lepto vaccine, because it isn’t very effective and has a high reaction rate, but definitely get every other vaccine. That might count as “some hesitancy.”
I honestly couldn’t care less what these clinical morons do to themselves, or their families. But, when you start fucking with animals…
Now this is funny because my dog only has the rabies vaccine and we get her titrated and only updated when the titer is low. We don’t get many other ones. Why? Well she reacts badly but our dog is a special case. Our dog has some insane levels of food allergies. Her test showed up rice. Rice. Our vet was like rice is never an allergy but that is one of the ones her testing showed. It helped us a lot because she was having diarrhea like crazy and we were told to feed her chicken and rice and it was not getting any better. We ended up putting her on hydrolyzed food ad we could find no anti alergen food that was ok. Its not surprising as besides rise she showed reactions to pretty much all meat and some other common ingredients. She does not even do well on the dry hydrolyzed food and just barely on the wet. We actually end up cooking the wet and she does pretty ok on that. She does get poop pills for her biome which is sorta back and forth. She reacts a bit to them that day but then it helps for the rest of the week (our theory is the donor dogs have something in their diet that survives digestion and she reacts a bit to it). Ok so where am I going with this. Its that in general the OP is right but there are a few folks who legitamately has a dog that has issues with it. but they went through a lot and have done tests to find out why. but just because you here about this one special needs dog does not mean the majority of the healthy dog population is fine with it. All of our other many dogs have gotten pretty much everything available and its been great. So not everyone heres something on the internet and just feel it applies to all dogs or their dog for some reason. some dogs legitametly have issues. All the same I hate that stories like this might get twisted by wierd follks who think vaccines are bad. They are great. I am happy I was born late enough in the 1900’s to avoid the majority of human history where epidemics was just a regular thing. Rather than a rare occurrence that was pretty much handled in two or three years.
Fair enough. There are special cases. But they are very rare. The vast, vast majority of dogs can tolerate vaccines.
This is also true in humans, by the way. There are very rare cases of humans, generally with allergy issues, who can’t take common vaccines. But in general, you should vaccinate yourself and you should vaccinate your pets.
yes this is what I was trying to get at. I think a lot of the vaccine denial crap use examples of edge cases. folks that have medical issues that do not apply to the vast majority. Most people live their lives without ever owning a dog like this. And we still get the rabies if her titer shows down (as long as she has not had diarrhea in awhile we and her can handle a few days of it.). We just go through the additional expense of the titer and oh man ticks are the worst. She never gets to go to brushy or forested areas and gets regular tick checks and when we have found them we remove them and get them sent off for testing which is more expense. If I could snap my fingers and have her healthy like all the rest of our dogs I certainly would.
Antivaxxers also use a ton of correlation, like the timing of autism becoming noticeable for most kids and certain scheduled shots. Combined with edge cases and absolutely no sense of scale and people not remembering most of the diseases that vaccines have made extremely rare, it is easy for people to ignore the safety and successes.
Your very first line, followed by the block of text with no paragraph breaks, make it sound like you’re telling everyone your dog has rabies (the actual disease, not the vaccine for rabies).
Just a FYI, but might explain your downvotes if people didn’t read further than “rabies”.
I did my part and auto-downvote walls of text.
thanks. I tend to write casually so will write in context which is really bad for the internet as folks do tend to read or even only see some of the pieces. Im pretty sure this has caused a bunch of back and forths I have had where I keep on saying you are taking this one part and not looking at the whole converstaion. I love the federation but I have seen how often I can only see a subset of various areas. Ended up making a bunch of duplicate posts to one magazine because I could not see the posts I just had made. Later I saw them when logged out.
My dog is allergic to the rabies shot but her vet gives it to her in two doses and we load her up on benedryl before the shot. And I do the same for a few of my own vaccines due to my own allergies. The work around isn’t perfect but I’m glad to have options. Some vaccines are just worth the risk.
yeah we do benedryl as well and that tends to help. We tend to use it when she has any iffy stuff like the poop pills or if she eats something off the ground.
That’s the right thing to do even with your dog’s situation. A few days of dog discomfort is sad to watch, but rabies is much, much worse.
Yup, my father in law has doctor’s orders not to get a bunch of vaccines because of a really horrible outcome from a flu vaccine about a decade ago. At his age we have to be really firm with other medical staff that he not get the flu or covid vaccines because of the risk of real side effects for him specifically.
The rest of us all have our shots because we know they are safe and effective for almost everyone. Except for the extremely rare exceptions.
oh yeah and its super important all of you have them to protect him. Whats the worst in that situation is having a family member who drinks the coolaide and puts grampa at risk.
They exist, but we make sure that they call instead of visit.
