Vaccines
Vaccines are an important part of your pet’s well being. Having your pet properly vaccinated will help to ensure a long healthy life for your pet. Vaccines help to control diseases that in some cases are potentially harmful to your pet and in other cases deadly to both pets and people (zoonotic). To learn more on zoonotic diseases please follow this link: www.petsandparasites.org.
What to Expect After Your Pet’s Vaccination
Vaccination is the most common veterinary preventive measure in history. It’s a safe and effective way to protect pets and people from serious disease. It’s common for your pet to experience mild side effects from vaccination. Typically starting within hours of vaccination, any symptoms are most often mild and usually do not persist for more than a few days. This is a normal response by your pet’s immune system during the process of developing protective immunity.
Common symptoms your pet may experience:
- Mild Fever
- Decrease in social behavior
- Diminished appetite or activity
- Sneezing or other respiratory signs with intranasal vaccines
- Discomfort or mild swelling at the injection sit
Rare side effects, such as an allergic reaction, may occur. Your pet may experience symptoms of a more serious reaction to the vaccine within minutes or hours of the vaccination
Rare symptoms could include:
- Swelling to face and legs
- Repeated vomiting or diarrhea
- Whole body itching
- Difficulty breathing
- Collapse
If your pet experiences any of these rare symptoms, you should contact your veterinarian immediately, as your pet may require additional medical treatment.
Rabies
Rabies is a virus that causes neurological disease in warm-blooded animals that with rare exceptions is fatal. Due to the public health issues involved, there are strict laws and rules in effect regarding vaccinations of pets. It is critical to keep your pet current on this vaccine to protect not only their health, but also yours.
Lyme
This disease is transmitted through tick bites.
Bordetella
This vaccine is used to help protect your pet from Infectious Canine Tracheobronchitis or more commonly called kennel cough.
DHPP
This vaccine has a couple of different safeguards for your pet.
- Canine Distemper – is a widespread, often fatal disease. It causes a fever, decreased white blood cell count, coughing, diarrhea, vomiting, severe nasal discharge, anorexia, and dehydration.
- Canine Adenovirus – type1 and type2 cause infectious hepatitis and respiratory infections.
- Canine Parainfluenza – is a mild respiratory infection.
- Canine Parvovirus – is a disease of widespread distribution which may cause severe dehydrating diarrhea in dogs of varying ages.
Leptospirosis
This is a bacterial infection of the kidneys sometimes involving other organs such as the liver.
PureVax Vaccines
Oakland Animal Hospital is very excited to announce that we are now going to offer our feline patients the Merial PureVax Feline Rabies vaccine. Merial has designed this vaccine to be a safer alternative to the common rabies vaccine that we currently offer. The PureVax Feline Rabies vaccine is a non-adjuvanted, highly effective vaccine that is given annually. All other current rabies vaccines contain an adjuvant, which is a chemical designed to promote a response from the immune system. Unfortunately, adjuvants have been implicated in causing more adverse reactions, injection site reactions and chronic inflammation. There have been a small number of cats that have developed a cancer that was associated with chronic inflammation from an injection. We feel the PureVax Rabies Vaccine is a safer alternative for our feline patients, and we are proud to begin using it on our feline patients.
We will also carry our previous rabies vaccine for those of you who would like your pet to continue to receive it every three years in lieu of the PureVax Feline Rabies vaccine.
Additionally, we are happy to inform our clients that we are now using the Merial PureVax Feline Leukemia vaccine (FeLV). This annual vaccine is also a non-adjuvanted vaccine that is highly effective against feline leukemia virus while decreasing potential risks of injection site reactions and chronic inflammation.
Please call us or ask your veterinarian at your next appointment if you have additional questions about these vaccines.