brandy76:My apt. complex is not near any farmland as it's a very populated surbabn city 15minutes from New York City. I don't go hiking, but as I said in my prev post I do see possums at night & the vet did say she can get it from a puddle. The vet mentioned one outbreak of a dog in my area who only went in his backyard and he got it.
But if this has happened in my area, i'm just curious to know why the holistic vets in this area don't recommend it.
It boils down to relative risk. The vaccine is a risk and the disease is a risk. One has to look at several factors:
- the risk of having a severe reaction to the vaccine (high in small dogs),
- the risk of contracting the disease,
- the severity of the disease itself, and
- the effectiveness of treatment.
If your dog has 1 chance in 200 of a severe reaction to the lepto vaccine, but only 1 chance in 1000 of contracting the disease, then maybe the vaccine isn't a good idea.
Seeing possums doesn't mean that you are seeing infected possums. I see coyotes, raccoons, possums, foxes, and skunks in my urban neighborhood just outside Dallas. Each of those species is known to sometimes carry rabies, but a dog with rabies would make the news. I assure you that we do not have 100% compliance with getting dogs vaccinated against rabies.
I would ask the regular vet
- what percentage of his canine patients are not vaccinated for lepto every 6-9 months and
- what percentage of his canine patients come down with lepto.
If he can't tell you these numbers, then (from his practice) he really can't tell you how likely an unvaccinated dog is to get lepto in your area. A story about one dog getting sick says only that the risk of a dog getting lepto is not zero. Was that dog vaccinated? A dog vaccinated against lepto can still get lepto if the vaccine was not effective against the right strain(s) of lepto.