 Most responsible pet owners know that it is important to take their pets into the surgery once a year for a check up and vaccination – but not everyone really appreciates the vital importance of these annual visits for the long term health of their pets.
It’s all too easy to assume that our pets are going to stay fit and healthy nowadays, and that infectious diseases such as distemper and parvovirus are things of the past, but the reality is not that straightforward. Without the protection that routine vaccinations confer on our cats and dogs, killer diseases such as parvovirus, feline enteritis and many others would still be commonplace and the outlook for our pets would be very different than it is today.
Thanks to modern vaccines, the incidence of many diseases that used to present serious threats to the health of our pets has been greatly reduced and our pets can now expect to live a long and healthy life without the shadow of diseases such as distemper, or feline leukaemia hanging over them. However this does not mean that we can afford to be complacent – far from it. As with many human diseases such as measles, the bacteria and viruses that cause these diseases will only disappear from circulation if the vast majority of the population is protected. This is the so-called ‘herd immunity’ theory and is the reason why diseases such as parvovirus are still around – not enough dogs are protected to completely eradicate the viruses from circulation, so any unprotected dogs are still at risk of falling ill.
So vaccinating your pets is not just about protecting them against diseases, it is also about protecting all of our pets together. If every single dog and cat were vaccinated regularly, there would be no more parvovirus, no more feline leukaemia and all the other diseases that we can now vaccinate against. Keeping our pets up to date with all the available vaccinations is, like pet insurance, part of responsible pet ownership and should be considered a necessity rather than a luxury.
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