Vaccinating your family members is important, and that includes your furry friends. In this blog post, we discuss why vaccinating your pets is important, as well as immunizations you should be giving to your pet, and where to get them.
Giving your pet the proper immunizations can prevent serious diseases, such as distemper, hepatitis, rabies, parvo virus, rhinotracheitis, and calivirus. In addition to your pet contracting these diseases, some of these can be transferred from your pet to the humans in your family.
Which vaccines should you give your pet?
It’s different for each individual animal, however there are “core vaccines” (diseases that are easily transferable to humans or fatal to animals) that every cat or every dog should get.
According to the American Association of Feline Practicioners, cats should be given immunizations, every three years, for core diseases such as:
• Rhinotracheitis
• Calivirus
• Rabies
• distemper
Dogs should be given immunizations for core diseases every one to three years:
• distemper
• rabies
• adenovirus
• Bordetella (parvovirus)
Your pet can also receive vaccinations for non-core diseases. For cats, these include Bordetella, Chlamydophila, feline infectious peritonitis, and feline leukemia. For dogs, these include kennel cough, leptospirosis, and Lyme disease.
For these vaccines, you should consult with your vet on how often your pet gets vaccinated because different factors such as breed, age, health, lifestyle (indoor vs outdoor, foods they eat, etc.), and travel habits can affect their recommendations.
There are a few places near us that can immunize your pet, if your vet is unavailable. Please contact the shelter if you have any questions.
We hope this article has given you a little more information on the importance of immunizations, as well as some ideas of where you can immunize your pet.