Is giving your dog vaccination important?

One lady, a business woman apparently came to the clinic with her puppies that got infected by maggots within their skin. The puppies were about 8 weeks of age. While taking the history of the puppies before clinical examination I asked the lady how many puppies they were in total, “eight” she said. I went further to ask her if the puppies have been immunized or vaccinated and she said no. I tried to advise her to do it as soon as possible due to the frequency of parvo-enteritis cases we treated so far. She told us that she wants to sell them off so that the buyers will go and do the immunizations necessary. It was obvious she had never seen a case of parvo-enteritis.

2 weeks later the lady rushed back to the clinic with about 3 puppies stooling profusely and vomiting. She told me that she does not understand what is going on with many of the puppies that they stopped eating at first then started vomiting 3 days later. On diagnosis we found out it was the same parvo-enteritis. I humbly told her the news which she did not understand at first and on discussing the bill the woman stormed out of the clinic with her puppies saying the bill was too much. I couldn’t say a word because she is just getting to meet “PARVO”.

One hour later she returned with the puppies and agreed to pay the bill and while the puppies underwent treatment she started to understand the reasons for the bill. I purposely insisted she comes around every day to see for herself. She now started telling another lady that came with her that I warned her and she thought I was only trying to make more money from her but now she is paying much more to treat the puppies. She recounted how she went to another clinic and they refused to let her in with the puppies. They told her that they will come to her house to treat the puppies just to dismiss her telling her how infectious the disease is.

The bottom line is that if she had done the immunization/vaccination early enough and followed up on the booster doses, things would have gone well.

What is vaccination?

Vaccination is a processing of inoculating vaccines into an animal or humans to elicit production of immune defense mechanism against diseases for which they are targeted at. Vaccines are substances that contain attenuated (reduced potency) version of the disease causing agent or micro-organism or a killed version of the same organism. These substances are injected, given orally and other means of administration to a person or animal to help that animal develop immunity against that organism. Vaccines are developed to help protect people or animals against diseases that may not have immediate cure or possibility of cure.

What vaccines are given to dogs?

There are many vaccines given to dogs for different diseases but we will only highlight the commons ones for our environment.

Anti-rabies vaccine – This vaccine has been the most important vaccine as far as Nigeria is concerned. Rabies is a zoonotic disease and a killer disease that mostly spreads through dog bite in Africa. There are other hosts of rabies virus but dogs leave among us and pose danger to us if they get infected. Anti-rabies vaccines should be given to all the dogs in Nigeria to prevent rabies disease from getting to humans. I think it is mandated by law that every dog owner in Nigeria must vaccinate them with anti-rabies vaccination so this one is non-negotiable.

DHLPP vaccine – This vaccine comes in different names like “DISTEMPER”, Triple vaccine etc. The alphabets –DHLPP stands for D – Canine Distemper, H – Canine Hepatitis, L – leptospirosis, Para-influenza and Parvo-enteritis. These represent different diseases of dogs that this single vaccine will protect your dog or puppy against. It is administered the first time followed with booster doses to produce a peak protective threshold.

Do these vaccines fail?

Absolutely! These vaccines are very fragile products that any break in the storage chain renders it useless and impotent. These vaccines are expected to be stored at 4 digress Celsius unaltered to maintain its potency until administered to the dog. Anything short of that can result to vaccine failure.

Most quacks “doctors” will store the vaccines anyhow until they are useless and still try to administer it to the dog which is very wrong.

So many persons approach you that they are trainers of dogs and from there they start to give you quotation for vaccinations, deworming and treatments. Please try to verify that they are qualified vets. Some of them will tell you that they are vets trained in VOM (Veterinary Research Instituted in VOM Plateau State). Please these guys are not veterinary doctors, VOM does not produce vet doctors, it’s only a research institute.

It is important you take your dog to a registered veterinary clinic or use a qualified veterinary doctor to do this properly in other to achieve the best result. Most veterinary clinic in Nigeria especially in Abuja are continuously monitored by VCN (Veterinary Council of Nigeria), NAFDAC (National Agency for Food and Drugs Administrative Control), AEPB (Abuja Environmental Protection Board). These agencies of government never hesitated to fine any defaulting clinic so you can comfortably use these clinics & veterinary hospitals.

In conclusion

Immunizing or vaccinating your dog is something that you should not think twice to do because the life of your dog or even your life may depend on it. In fact you should budget it as you think of acquiring the dog.