Vaccinate your pets

Posted by ERV on May 9, 2012
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Anti-vaxers are horrible people– They refuse to receive the recommended/required vaccinations and put everyone else (not just the very young, very old, or otherwise immunocompromised) at risk of contracting preventable diseases.

Anti-vaxers are horrible parents– They abuse their children with their own personal ignorance and fears, dooming the poor things to preventable diseases and their associated side-effects, and turn their children into little disease spreading monsters (see above, see this years Superbowl, see the day-care fraud story).

Anti-vaxers are also horrible pet owners– Back when this crazy anti-vaxer chick visited OKC, we noticed several pieces of literature encouraging and instructing pet owners how to get away with not vaccinating their pets.

The effects of non-vaccination in pets is exactly what we see in humans– adults having mild disease, spreading it everywhere, killing puppies and vulnerable dogs, pets dying of preventable diseases (or racking up huge medical bills vs the $20 shot), and something, which for me would be worse than death: A choice between euthanasia or solitary confinement for six months.

“If an unvaccinated pet comes in contact with a rabid or suspected rabid animal, the owner has two options,” she said. “They can confine the pet in a ‘no touch’ double enclosure for six months to determine if the pet is infected with rabies or have the pet euthanized. Nobody wants that.”

Imagine that your pet, your best friend, either had to be killed or locked in a box, isolated from all other human or animal contact for six months because you are either a) against vaccinations, or b) too goddamn lazy/stupid to keep your pets vaccines up to date.

That is the decision one dog owner is facing in North Carolina.

See, “dogs dont get rabies in the US anymore”. Like how “people dont get polio or measles or whatever in the US anymore”. So its easy to forget, or to make excuses for not vaccinating.

Problem is, rabies isnt in dogs in the US anymore because we vaccinate dogs against rabies.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 55,000 people die of rabies worldwide each year, primarily in countries where pets are not vaccinated. WHO says that dog bites are the source of 99 percent of these cases and WHO credits widespread vaccination of domestic animals for preventing these deaths in the United States.

Rabies *is* present in the wild animal population. So this persons dog got into a fight with a rabid raccoon– if the dog was vaccinated, *shrug* no big deal. But the dog wasnt. So the owner now gets to be scared that THEY were exposed to rabies (and go through all of the oh-so-pleasant preventative therapy) AND they get to choose whether they are going to kill their dog or have it potentially go nuts from 6 months of isolation.

The owner handled the dog’s collar after the fight, which resulted in potential exposure. The dog was not current with its rabies vaccine, so he was brought to Animal Services until the raccoon could be tested. Today, the state lab confirmed the raccoon had rabies. The dog will remain at Animal Services for a six-month quarantine.

*slow-clap*

Way to go, Ace!

I am so pissed off…

Get your goddamn pets vaccinated, people.

Jesus.

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Comments

  1. #1 cynical1
    May 9, 2012

    Too bad they couldn’t euthanize the owner!

  2. #2 Optimus Primate
    May 9, 2012

    Euthanasia would be far too kind and quick a punishment for the human. I say stick them in a box for six months.

  3. #3 CommanderTuvok
    May 9, 2012

    C’mon Abbie, a couple of new pictures of your pup would be nice.

  4. #4 Guy Plunkett
    May 9, 2012

    You know, until this post I somehow never made the connection that anti-vaxers, in addition to being “horrible people” and “horrible parents” (totally agree, in case that isn’t clear), were also neglecting their beloved pets in a similar manner. A “d’oh!” moment of which I am not proud.

  5. #5 Prometheus
    May 11, 2012

    I knew a few people who decided they wanted to be park rangers. I guess they thought they were going to be wandering around in khaki shorts and hand feeding singing Disney fauna. The wake-up moment was always when they took their rabies risk decapitation class.

    Hey Abbie, that testing lab is not far from you.

    Don’t visit.

    I thought I would never see anything as freaky as the FBI print lab with all the racks of severed human hands.

    People who fail to vaccinate their pets should do their quarantine with the state microbiologist, watching them do the cerebellum lobe samples and stem cross section on the animal heads that show up in Styrofoam coolers.

    It’s just a matter of time before that anti-vax anti-dad shows up in the thread so let me just say, my sixty day old devil baby got vaccinated yesterday.

    Immediately afterward she was unable to walk, talk or control her bowels. Damn you Big Pharma!

    She was pretty pissed off but I can’t express what a relief that was. The Washington state pertussis outbreak is now headed for 3000 cases. Today is the first day I don’t have to threaten to chop off the fingers of grabby women, who haven’t had their boosters, trying to paw my kid.

  6. #6 Liisa
    May 15, 2012

    This country is officially rabies-free but we’re not an island. My father was once bitten by a dog. Since he was carrying some groceries, the dog ran away and dad needed to go and get the post-exposure prophylaxis. It was required that he stay in hospital for several days but he did some arguing and they gave him the shot and sent him off, allegedly without any warning. He drove somewhere the next day and vomited at every roadpost; not pleasant indeed. It’s extremely unlikely that in a place with no documented case of rabies in animals (not sure about bats, though, but foxes, the usual vectors, are clear, I hear) that he’d get rabies from a downtown dog but still.

    I should drag my cat to the vet, too. I doubt she’d give rabies to someone but she’s inside/outside so nasties are not entirely out of question.

  7. #7 Kiko
    May 16, 2012

    Unless you are in Hawaii, this country is not rabies free. Rabies may be uncommon in the pet population, but there HAVE been human cases in the US in the past few years:

    http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/index.html

    Rabies free means you have *no cases of rabies* We have wildlife that keep the virus a thing to be worried about.

    Rabies is nearly always fatal in people, and that is why the health department dosen’t fool around with it

  8. #8 John Scanlon, FCD
    May 18, 2012

    Kiko, are you assuming that Liisa’s ‘this country’ is the same one as your ‘this country’?

    There’s a reason it was called the world-wide web.