It’s people who are against vaccinating dogs, I should specify, not dogs who are against vaccinations.
Dog anti-vaxxers, I have learned, hate two things: vaccinations, and taxes.
“If someone goes up to the kennels and I am not with them, the dogs will bark. I will try and get some videos of the dogs on alert, when I get through with my taxes.”
Things started off relatively simple:
“An Alsatian at 1 1/2 or 2 yrs old will not need to go to a vet until about 10 yrs old. There will be no medical bills unless created by the humans in his/her life that includes any accidents because a human wasn’t paying attention. You may decide to take your dog in for health check ups of course.”
Then, by the FAQ, things slide in a pear-shapewardly direction.
Rabies is a very CONTROVERSIAL subject to me and to a lot of other dog owners who do not TRUST the government and the RULES put in place to keep the sheeple in line. Rabies is a very good way to LOG and keep FILES on all dog owners. Makes it easy to do a lot of different things:
1. Break and enter into a private citizens home for a variety of reasons deemed necessary by the legal authorities.
2. Taxes
3. Fines
4. Information
I have never seen a list get so vague so quickly!
“Rabies outbreaks or dogs that are rabid, are suppose to be on file with each state’s HEALTH and SAFETY dept. Anyone can call them and ask, “when was the last time a dog was proven to be rabid in this state?” Try it for your homework assignment.. Let me know what they say to you…let me give you a clue as to what they will say “We have a five year system and can only go back five years on records” then you say, “Well, okay then, how many canines were reported having rabies within this state in the last five years?” They will tell you NONE. If you do this every year for the next twenty years, you will still get the same answer.”
Will one of you do me a small favor? Will you call your state’s health and safety department and ask about the rabies history of dogs, and then follow up every year for the next twenty years, and let me know if that is true?
(There is also an entire section explaining that dogs are not capable of love, which is, I mean, probably true, but seems like an odd point to want to hammer home if your job is selling dogs to people.)
Now I suppose you want me to explain why an animal holds no love? They are incapable of it. Why? Because they do not have emotions as we do. They run off instincts; behavioral instincts and genetic instincts that are passed down from the beginning of that particular species existence.
Okay, so you are now going to give me examples of your dog’s love… please send me an e-mail explaining why you believe that your dog has the emotion ‘love’ within its genetic make up…
1. Because your dog is happy to see you when you come home. He wags his tail and goes nuts over you; this is your reason as to why you believe a dog holds love.
Now, let’s take your dog out of its years spent in only this environment and lets also take you out of the dog’s life and let’s pretend that your dog never knew any humans; only its pack members.
Your dog reacts this same exact way to other members of the pack, running to greet another dog that will let (your dog) jump up on it and lick it and squirm and pee on the floor or whatever your dog does to you.
Now let’s make this scene realistic…Dogs do not allow other dogs to jump on them and carry on like that. No, they do not. I am in the dog scene every day and though some pack members may tolerate greetings in many different ways from the different dogs in the pack, if any dog gets out of control, jumping and licking and carrying on, the top dog will attack it. ALL DOGS REACT THIS WAY. There is a reason for it and it is not love.
Anyhow, today I learned about something I didn’t know existed before. These arguments in the FAQ are even better than the time those guys on a bodybuilding forum couldn’t agree how many days there were in the week. I’ll see you on the other side.
Tags: animals, anti-vaccination, taxes
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There are also horse anti-vaxxers and one of them is a friend and normally very logical and thoughtful and evidence-based in her training and I just CAN’T with her.
Yeah, although as former horse person I can say I have never met a bigger group of people more susceptible to woo and sloppy thinking than other horse people. Something about an unpredictable 600kg pet/vehicle that can die of sore feet or kill you, just carelessly messes with your sense of proportion I guess.
I love horses and have met many great horse people, but I try to stay out of most horse discussions because… There are people out there who think that horses used to be practically immortal before farriers were invented because Pliny said he’d heard about a horse that lived to be 75, and then some 19th century dude quoted Pliny as evidence that horse shoes were bad. I’ve had that conversation (I was ignored).
I had a large horse client (with 40 plus horses) who didn’t vaccinate on cost grounds. Then she lost one to tetanus and now we trot over there every year, regular as clockwork, for a vaccinations day. Some diseases such as influenza are more a commercial disease rather than life threatening. People who do not vaccinate against tetanus are just daft. Given that 95% of my patients are vaccinated, I still see a tetanus case every couple of years and their prognosis is poor.
I always do the full gamut every year because we travel to events with shared water and camp in the wilderness. It only takes one rabid bat or campground raccoon, I figure. The friend I mentioned above was coasting by on (literal) herd immunity. She wouldn’t use “chemical” dewormer, either.
Yeah I used to work for a horse trainer that was an anti-vaxxer homeopath nut. I started looking for a new job when she decided that COPD, navicular, and cataracts could all be treated with homeopathic sugar pills.
Uh, sorry to burst your bubble, but dogs aren’t capable of love ONLY if you send them to public schools. I homeschool my dearest pup, and she is capable of many human emotions – we learned weltschmerz just this week! Now would you like a glass of unpasteurized milk?
They can talk about dogs never getting rabies, but I don’t think the skunk that was wailing and drunkenly staggering around my backyard at 7 AM a few years ago was doing the Walk of Shame. I think I’d rather risk someone breaking into my house than expose my dog to that horror show.
(ETA: Animal Control came and shot it. RIP and sorry, Mr. Skunk.)
My mom’s neighbor’s dog acquired rabies in their lovely suburb. It was very sad. The neighbor hadn’t had him vaccinated, we cannot understand why.
Ugh, thanks for being on top of things, though. If it’s a subject you’re interested in at all, the book “Rabid” is an excellent cultural history of the disease.
That sounds fascinating! (BTW I read your comment, checked out the ebook from my local library via their website, and had the book on my phone in less than 2 minutes. Technology, y’all.)
Why didn’t you call Heck and Atticus?
They put a warning in the newspaper around here when they dump fish pellets full of vaccine from airplanes, just so you keep your dogs from eating them. Considering the number of bats and racoons and skunks here, I’m glad they can do that. Rabies is terrifying
I believe I was happier before the internet.
Um….I don’t do yearly vaccinations for my insanely healthy GSD simply because he has an adult immune system and rarely comes into contact with strange dogs. But I do get a rabies vaccination to comply with US/Canada customs so we can go camping, shop, etc. without thinking about TAXES and GOVERNMENT SURVELLIENCE.
Wishing you and Nicole a super happy fun time! Hopefully another mini-horse field trip is in the works, alongside the gym workouts, of course.
Say…what does Jenny McCarthy say about this?
This is literally the first time that that sentence has been written.
Maybe there are no recorded cases of rabid dogs in the past 5 years because MOST PEOPLE VACCINATE THEIR DOGS, and the people who don’t because GUBMINT are the type to shoot a rabid dog and bury it and not report it? You know, maybe. Because there are all of these other lovely rabies vectors called “wild animals” wandering about without vaccinations, so it’s not like dogs only get rabies from other dogs.
exactly. Hmm, we have a vaccine against this horrible disease, and now no one gets it, I wonder why that is?
Living in Eastern Mass, I’m jealous of my dog’s vaccination schedule – she gets a Lyme Disease shot every year. My daughter and most of my friends and neighbors have had Lyme at least once. WHERE’S THE PEOPLE LYME VACCINE, BIG PHARMA? HAND IT OVER.
There was a people lyme vaccine! But you can’t get it now. I believe I read about it in the comments here at the Toast not too long ago, in fact, someone had a link to an article, I think this one? http://www.wbur.org/2012/06/27/lyme-vaccine
Right. If she needs proof of the benefits of public health programs to limit/monitor canine rabies she can start by checking out human rates of infection in countries where widespread canine vaccination is lacking…India, for one.
They also appear to have invented their own hip scoring system, which is exciting. Any Toasties with actual knowledge care to comment on it? http://www.schwarzdogs.com/xrays.html
I am dying to know. Please educate me!
Hip dysplasia is actually a serious issue with that breed, so I guess it makes sense that a breeder would take a rigorous interest in it but that degree of it seems…maybe a little excessive?
It seems a little dismissive of actual evidence from experts.
Fun stuff.
Yeah, her breeds are incredibly likely to have hip and elbow dysplasia. The OFA illustrations are not ‘rediculus’ or whatever she said – they’re ideal, but shouldn’t a breeder strive for ideal? I don’t understand her system at all – her dog’s ‘good’ xrays are precisely that, good. Her rating them ‘excellent’ should scare off any partner breeder or potential purchaser!
And saying she can judge just by looking? No. No. You can’t judge – a hip may be anywhere fair to excellent and look the same in motion. But there’s a difference on x-ray! And the difference in future puppies from a dog with fair hips vs excellent hips is huge. That’s how the dogs got bad hips to begin with – they look fine, then the 3rd generation is a DISASTER.
This woman just doesn’t want to believe that someone knows better than she does, and she’s wrong.
My favorite thing is that she grades the joint components as “Excellent, Good, Fine, Ok, Poor, Bad. ” How the fuck do you distinguish between OK and Fine?
If you want to breed the animal, it’s fine! If you look at the xrays of some other breeder’s dog, who has an Excellent from OFA, then it’s clearly just Ok, because what do they know anyway?!
*~$science$~*
A+ use of sparkly unicorn punctuation!
~*~ <3 ~*~
German shepherd show lines have fucked-up hips by default, so it’s super important to get certification that doesn’t depend on breed standard. OFA is the health standard that you can trust independently of breed guidelines or breeder preferences. It’s practically mandatory for dysplasia-prone breeds like shepherds and retrievers. Her dogs’ hips are OFA fair at best and frankly, I don’t trust the joint knowledge of anybody who can’t spell “cartilage.”
I hate to impose this on innocent readers, but there is also a contingent of pet owner who believe it’s cruel to neuter dogs and that owners should ensure their unneutered dogs’ well being by giving them handjobs. I’d link to the website by honestly I was so traumatized by it I don’t have the heart to look at it agan.
OH MY GOD MY SISTER KNOWS A WOMAN LIKE THIS. They take their dogs to the same dog park. My sister won’t shake her hand, or even talk to her much, because (aside from the obvious on the handshake part) every single conversation turns to how she jacks off her dog.
Sister and BIL call her “Debbie Dogwhacker.”
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
With any luck, now that I’ve given her the heads-up, my beloved sister will chime in with stories of D.D.
Like how, for BIL’s birthday, she had to work out the seating chart so that only the people whom she didn’t like or didn’t care if she ever saw again were sitting near Debbie. And how she had to decide (I helped a little) exactly how long our dad deserved to have to talk to D.D. at some party or other.
See, this is why I don’t have friends. This is what having friends gets you.
Couldn’t she just… not invite this person to things? Seems like it might be the lesser of two awkwards.
But see, that would be easy. And then we’d have nothing to contribute to dinner conversation.
These are all parties other people put together. I have no say in the guest list.
And really, who’d want to, considering that there are people who DON’T make it onto the guest list? This means that D.D. is PREFERABLE TO SOME OTHER PEOPLE. I don’t want to be involved in these decisions.
I just had a bout of honest to god mini hysteria, trying to be quiet because my poor husband is watching a cooking show and this would just not be a fair thing to tell him about while he’s thinking about ways to make tiramisu and chili con carne.
Even the party for BIL was something someone else controlled, mostly. And like I said, given that dog-handjobs are part of the equation, I would rather be carried along unresisting on the current. Thinking about it too much would wake me, and I drown.
Hi! Sis of Mingus Thurber here! I sat next to Debbie Dogwhacker at a baby shower! The playing field was not raked for discussions of handjobs, so she told me for thirty minutes about her cracked nipples! “Every time my daughter cried, I cried too.”
Knowledge of dog handjob, or half-hour monologue about bleeding, chafed secondarty sex characteristics: which would you choose, and why? Give examples. Be specific.
Obviously you need to stay here and comment forever. I like you.
Why, thank you. I am genuinely psyched to read this.
Normally when I tell people about Debbie Dogwhacker they run away crying with their hands over their ears. This is a really nice change.
These are the stories I live for!! Humans are so crazy in such a diverse variety of ways. If you have actually attended social events with DD, then I know you must be acquainted with some other very special people. Please share!
YOUR NAME IS PIGGLEWIGGLE IS YOUR HOUSE UPSIDE DOWN
I just took my meds, so I know there are good stories but the only one I can think of right now is about me. We were all at a restaurant at breakfast, sitting at benches at a long table on a patio, and I had my back to the planters and lovely flowers. I got excited about my pancakes and fell backwards into the landscaping. The problem was that the planters were spaced exactly one SisMingusThurber apart, so I could not move my arms or my legs. I was trapped between lovely patinaed brass planters with nothing showing but my knees.
And nobody else could help because they couldn’t reach in between the planters because every millimeter of space was filled with me, and anyhow, even if they could have reached in, have you ever tried getting leverage when you’re sitting at a long table filled with pancakes and the bench backs up right onto giant brass planters and is bolted to the patio? Nobody could get up to help. Nobody could lean over. Nobody could get any purchase because I couldn’t even reach out my arms. AND MY PANCAKES WERE GETTING COLD.
I honestly do not recall how I got out of the landscaping back onto the bench, but my pancakes were good.
I tried telling some stories about Debbie Dogwhacker. They didn’t get past the mods.
Maybe it’s just as well. She can haunt your dreams tonight like the Wendigo. The thing we see only in glimpses is more frightening than what we face in the full sunlight. Unless, of course, it’s D. D. and her dog, in which case GTFO and don’t bother packing.
I am shaking at my desk and making odd repressed-laughing noises and my new-ish coworkers are going to think I’m super strange. ALL YOUR FAULT.
Luckily I’m alone, but same noises.
Ooh god. Laughing too hard. I almost choked on my plum.
WA;WHET;RLAWHE;TLJQW;ELKTJAL;KSJTEA;WELKJTQW;ELKFJA;SLFJAS;ODIL
I’m so sorry.
What about the females? They’re the ones who go into heat. Are there … tools … for that?
I am certain there are, she said heavily.
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
D:
NO
Thank you so much for your restraint. There’s no way I wouldn’t have clicked that link.
Addendum: I feel I should go ahead and admit I was once party to a dog handjob in a professional setting, during the collection of semen for an artifical insemination of a Golden Retriever. (The veterinarian was responsible for the wrist action. I merely held the rubber vagina for collection.) The experience was as horrifying as you would imagine and a large part of the reason I didn’t go to vet school, and my relationship with my boss was never the same again.
“The veterinarian was responsible for the wrist action. I merely held the rubber vagina for collection” doesn’t really make it better for me. I am glad your experience was different from mine.
I am laughing too hard I am laughing too hard I am laughing too hard oh god help
aaaaaaaahhhh ok ok ok…. no not ok not ok not ok aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh this whole thread I just
Also? I can’t decide whether it’s worse to be party to a dog handjob professionally or on a strictly amateur basis.
The noise I made while trying not to make a noise hurt my throat.
I have actually removed my eyeballs from my head. Thank you for that.
Because I apparently have a dark drive to keep myself in a perpetually horrified state, I actually looked for this website. Omfg, thank god I wasn’t able to find the actual dog handy site, because the dog anti vax site that I did find was so completely bonkers that I know that I couldn’t handle the real thing. This crazy blog I found rambled on about our “neo-Puritan” views on dogs sexual drives, said that we don’t actually have a dog overpopulation problem in shelters-shelters are importing dogs from an undefined area “the south”(south of the Mason-Dixon Line, south of the equator, I don’t know?!?). I had to stop reading after she claimed it was a FACT that neutered Irish Setters spontaneously begin to try to bite their own dicks off once they reach old age. So much crazy that I would not believe existed had I not forced myself to look for it.
Also my google history now includes unneutered dog handjobs 😱
We’re in a dog heavy neighborhood and often take our dog to an area where ticks dwell. You can bet we give her every vaccine we can get. Any kind of dog infection runs RAMPANT in our neighborhood (though less so since the unofficial dog park (which was basically a small scrubgrass area covered in dog poop) was fenced off for construction into an actual, not disease-pit, dog park.
Oh yeah, absolutely. You could never go to the park when another dog is there and STILL get viruses. Dogs can catch many things just be being in places other animals – including non-dogs – frequent. Giardia, parvo, and leptospirosis have infected dogs who walked through a puddle which was contaminated. Kennel cough lingers in the environment and spreads like the human cold. It’s just like kids – you could keep yours away from other kids with chicken pox, but chances are good that if your kid goes into the world, they’ll catch something eventually!
I hope your official dog park is a healthier place to play!
Someone following The Toast on Facebook saw this article and has said they’re now unfollowing. :/ I can’t decide if my sarcasm detector’s on the blink, they’re annoyed because they think Mallory’s endorsing/making fun of it, or something else entirely…
I hope they find a website they like better, then!
At the risk of sycophancy, I find it hard to believe anyone could like a website more than The Toast. These people do exist though, I guess…
(Also, slightly more awake me has realised that was a rubbish thing for me to just post. I’m really sorry. :s)
some people are simply not cut out to be Toasties *shrug* good riddance.
A lot of people will say “I’m unfollowing” or “I’m deleting you on [communications platform]” as a joke when confronted with something humorously revolting–sort of like when you groan at a friend’s bad pun. Maybe they meant it that way.
Man I just cannot even with articles (informed or not) about how ACTUALLY your animal doesn’t experience LOVE, it’s just doing [instinctual animal reaction to conditioning]. So what, who cares, it looks enough like love for all practical purposes, doesn’t it, my widdle snugglepumpkins?
But what is LOVE, really? If you are an asshole, you can reduce it all to behavioral conditioning. Or you can just accept that your dog loves you. OK?!?!?
Whenever I see stuff like that I want to go into full alien android “What is love?” mode. But seriously, outside of being able to interview the dogs about their feelings, how much more evidence do we have that humans are capable of emotions like love than animals?
Oh geez now I’m doing the Night at the Roxbury dance………..
Alien… polyester? Android… autotune? Yep, definitely hearing and seeing things right now.
It’s only better as sung by floppy drives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_XaJ7gE4Q
Also, no shit your dog wouldn’t treat you affectionately if it weren’t your dog.
You know how when your wife comes home, she smiles and kisses you and asks you about your day? Well let’s pretend you’re not married, imagine she’s lived on another continent her whole life and you never even met. Now when you walk up to her? No smiles, no kisses, no small talk. That’s right: your wife doesn’t really love you.
I figure my child wouldn’t keep loving me if I stopped feeding him. The same for my cat.
Human emotions are also conditioned responses, hormones and electrical stimuli.
Key factors in my love for my partner are that he feeds me steak and scratches my back; dogs know what is up.
My dog, my partner and I all cuddle in a big heap and it is just the most perfect oxytocin feedback loop imaginable.
I mean the argument could be made that human love is the result of behavioral/genetic conditioning.
The argument they actually use is human love comes from God, and is a special gift between humans and their maker.
I have no come backs from that line of argument.
So you’re saying they’re not going to go for my whole meat-robot hypothesis. Also people are diiiiiicks.
I, for one, am here for the meat-robot hypothesis.
my comeback to that argument would be “wow”
Who is this “they”? Oh, Christians, I guess. So do they think the love between two atheists isn’t real? It feels pretty real to me.
Anecdata time!
I’m a Christian and all the evidence points to the conclusion that my atheist husband loves me. Draw your own conclusions.
(it could just be that I make him coffee in the morning)
(he makes coffee for me, so we’re even)
MUTUAL CONDITIONING!
My other partner is a pagan so she probably can only really love rocks and trees, or guys wearing antlers, right?
She can love the people whom rocks and trees and guys wearing antlers TELL HER to love. Like, deep inside her being. Secret rocky, rooty, antlery messages.
Ah, but the unbelieving husband is justified through his wife, so that’s probably what’s happening there.
He does the laundry for both of us, so I’m willing to keep doing the religion.
Division of labor is an important part of any marriage.
“The argument they actually use is human love comes from God, and is a special gift between humans and their maker. ”
Ooo, ooo! My comeback to that is, DOG IS JUST GOD SPELLED BACKWARDS. The dogs of my acquaintance have been better models of patience, kindness, and not rendering evil for evil than any human I know. I do not give a shit if I’m anthropomorphizing– J. Random Dog makes me aspire to behave more compassionately, and that is more than she is doing.
I am now horribly reminded of the eighth-grade fight I got in with a Catholic nun who insisted that there were no dogs in heaven because ANIMALS DON’T HAVE SOULS. To a classroom full of thirteen-year-olds. I felt so vindicated when Pope Francis made the call.
This is super fake but makes me happy anyway: http://m.imgur.com/gallery/1jQPT
I refuse to believe that when our cat Gus flops down on my fiance’s lap and wraps his arms around my fiance’s tummy in a big hug, and purrs like crazy, that that is not love in some form.
Even if it’s love for the warm tummy and not the person, it’s still love. 🙂
I am in the dog scene every day
I am in the dog scene
the dog scene
So glad I’m working from home today so no one has to see my tears of laughter…
I am not so lucky, omg. My coworkers will be side-eyeing me forever.
I love that line so much! I plan to casually drop this into conversation in the very near future.
I wonder whether we should use it as a Toast greeting. “Hey, are you in the dog scene?” “Why yes, I *am* in the dog scene.”
This Ain’t A Scene, It’s A Fetch Game
dog scene kids
Hah, a dog walker/pet sitter’s website described herself as “active in the dog community, and now offering pet sitting services to the cat community.” Like what community, the dogs are meeting up at coffee shops on Saturdays? And all the indoor cats are writing on their cat message boards?
I think a cat message board would look a lot like the Toast’s open thread. I hope, anyway.
Cat message boards would be the most hostile place! Cats don’t even present their best selves when meeting new cats face-to-face, so I suspect the anonymity of the internet would quickly go to their heads.
I was in the dog scene in the ’70s. It was a crazy time, man.
After the “jerking off your dog” thread above, “dog scene” takes on a new and horrifying meaning. (Not that it was that great an image BEFORE, to be fair.)
what is this “dog scene” of which this person speaks, and how can I get there
Oh yes, I know all about the dog (and cat) anti-vaxxers from my years as a vet tech… They tended to be the same people who would bring a dog in with a raging UTI, and when we prescribed antibiotics, they’d ask if we had anything homeopathic they could use instead. Or they’d bring in an obviously malnourished animal and say it was on a “raw diet,” meaning that they fed it raw chicken breasts from the grocery store and nothing else. They’d usually refuse all medications and treatments, leaving us wondering why they’d bothered to come to the vet in the first place.
And, goddammit, the reason why rabies vaccines are required by law, even though it’s extremely rare in most places in the US for domestic animals to get rabies, is because the disease can be transmitted by any mammal, is communicable to humans and has a 100% MORTALITY RATE. If you get bitten by an unvaccinated animal and there is even a small chance it had rabies, you have to be subjected to a lengthy and extremely painful treatment process… I’ve seen it and it is not fun.
Ugh… apparently I harbor a lot of anger about this!
If it makes you feel any better, I’m a raw feeder but my dog gets ALL THE VACCINES (as well as an exciting rotation of meats and organs and whatever other foods she can scam out of us. Loves kimchi.) I’m fucking jealous that she can get vaccinated against Lyme and I can’t.
My brother’s friend got rabies from a monkey in Costa Rica when he was 15. I remember hearing about the treatment (and the trouble he had getting back to the US) and recovery. Vaccinate your pets! and your kids
To (miss) quote Mitch Benn: Vaccinate your pets, vaccinate your pets, bloody vaccinate your bloody pets
(the song is about vaccinating kids, obvs)
“leaving us wondering why they’d bothered to come to the vet in the first place. ”
So that they can go back to their blogs and colleagues and homes scented with dog secretions and go on and on and on about what rubbish the vet spouted to them when they KNEW that Fluffy was just in need of a good “seeing-to”.
And then they’d all agree with each other about how RIGHT they all are.
A friend of mine in college had a cat who ended up dying of feline leukemia after he’d had her for a couple of years, and he was CONVINCED that there was no vaccine for it. I found this out after I said something pretty inconsiderate about “maybe you should’ve vaccinated her, bro.” It occurs to me now that this could mean he had never ever taken her to the vet and that is super fucked.
I lost a cat to feline leukemia back before there was a vaccine. Earlier, lost a newly adopted kitten to distemper in my teens. Both losses have stuck with me; vaccinate, dammit! I’m nearly as grateful for the feline leukemia vaccine as my parents were when Salk developed the polio vaccine…
A friend’s dogs were exposed to a rabid raccoon, which they killed . They were vaccinated, so everything is ok with the dogs. BUT, my friend and her husband now have get rabies shots for people, because they have now been exposed. Rabies is no joking matter.
The antivaxxers are scary
So this just happened: Girl Bit by Rabid Bat
I think my vet might be a cat anti-vaxxer. We recently took our cat in for a check up and she was like “Well, he’s due for a rabies shot, but he’s an indoor cat with no interest in escape, and there have been no reports of rabies in this county for years… technically I’m just legally obligated to tell you that he needs one, and you can tell me that you’ll get it done somewhere else…”
We opted not to get the rabies vax, so I guess that makes ME a cat anti-vaxxer too. Also fount out that the black spot on his chin is cat acne, and the cure for cat acne is Clearasil.
Isn’t there a vaccine for feline leukemia, though? Is your vet against *all* vaccines or does he/she just pick and choose?
I was mostly joking, I don’t think she’s actually an anti-vaxxer in the usual human sense, just that she thinks the rabies vax is unecessary for indoor cats in our area.
Feline leukemia vaccination is actually considered a “non-core” vaccine. It’s usually recommended for cats that will be outdoors or indoor/outdoors who may come into contact with other animals, but is not necessarily recommended for indoor only kitties. If the vet were to officially not recommend a vaccine (of those commonly in use), this would probably be the first one to toss.
Also, if you switch to a metal or ceramic bowl for their water your cat’s chin acne might improve. Apparently plastic harbors more bacteria.
Wow. You just solved a problem I didn’t know I had. Thank you.
My older cat occasionally gets a black spot under his chin and he drinks from a plastic bowl.
I can’t wait to tell Mr. Cleo that we’re going to change the cats’ water bowls because of something I learned on a thread about dog anti-vaxxers (and dog wackers).
Coming back to add that I just fell into a worm hole googling “cat acne” – I could have gone my whole life without seeing a picture of advanced cat acne, and yet the same disgusting photo is on every other post about cat acne. Shudder.
Eh, I do a similar thing with my (indoor only) cat. Taking her to the vet is so very stressful to her I try not to go unless something is wrong so I doubt she is up to date on everyhing, but I wouldn’t consider you or I cat anti-vaxxers since we don’t really seem to have any objection to giving our cat the vaccine if neccessary or think other people shouldn’t vaccinate (I may be making presumptions on your part, sorry!). Coincidentally, mine is up to date on her rabies because she needed to fly with me when we moved (I also need to make her an appointment to get heartworm pills, because while I can keep rabid animals out of my 3rd floor apartment, I can’t protect her from mosquitos)
With indoor cats you can be more flexible with their vaccinations – some available cat vaccinations like for FIV are made pm unnecessary by living indoors without contact with ‘outdoor’ animals. If you have an indoor cat with a dog or other animal you take outside, I’d still recommend getting all the vaccines all the time.
With rabies I make sure to get boosters for my indoor cat because I travel internationally with her a lot, but outside of the basic vaccines + boosters I don’t really bother.
Thanks for the info! And I have to ask what it’s like to travel internationally with your cat a lot, omg. Please tell me you do so in an incredibly stylish manner.
Oh man lol I try, I try so hard, but my cat is such an anxious ball of fur that I instead focus on making her as comfortable as possible. She feels safest when she thinks she can’t be ‘seen’, so I have a soft black carrier to match her (mostly) black fur so she can pretend no one can see her. It works well, until I have to take her out of the carrier to go through security – it is so hard to take a nervous cat out of her safe carrier to carry her through a metal detector when there are hundreds of people around! She’s also a teeny tiny cat (9yo but only 3.5kg!) so she fits under the airplane seat, carrier and all.
I’ve never had an incident with her, even on long flights (6+ hrs) or car rides, but it does take a lot out of her. 🙁 I have recently been giving her some Bio-Calm on the recommendation of a vet, and that has had a big impact on her stress levels during travel/vet appointments as well as shortening her recovery time from ‘big events’.
Yeah, my indoor-only “senior” cat (he’s 10) only gets rabies, and we spread those apart as far as possible. He did get FIV and FeLV vaxxes in his previous life as an indoor-outdoor cat. Funny story, that. He was an indoor-only cat until he was two, when he managed to somehow get out the front window of my parents’ house (which is where the two of us, my parents, my brother, my mother’s cat who is his “sister”, and my sweet departed perfect lovely kitty Pearl lived at the time). He was missing for two weeks because apparently he is *really really dumb* and I guess could not figure out how to get back? Anyway someone called us to say they had seen him in the park and then seen our flyer, so we started going to the park and calling him, and leaving food out, and he reappeared! (at midnight, under a neighbor’s car three houses down). He was basically fine, but after his, uh, “adventure” he started *throwing himself bodily at the French doors in the back* and we just gave up and put a collar on him and my Mom’s cat (Pearl was somewhat elderly at this point and uninterested in wandering much). Turns out, he’s SUPER territorial and while terrified of many un-scary things, will scare off interlopers no problem. He never came in all that scratched up, though, so I’m assuming he mostly scared them off with ungodly cat noises rather than actually fighting.
Then I moved into an apartment with no safe outdoor access and took him with me so he no longer has Kitty Adventures (nor brings mice into the house, which is nice).
Cats actually have vaccination-related cancers, generally from FeLV and rabies, so there are good reasons to avoid them if they aren’t necessary.
Right… we had a cat die of one of those, and opt to do the minimum (safe!) vaccination schedule for our indoor cats now.
My cats had their first-year course of initial jabs, but they’re indoor cats and my vets are perfectly happy that I didn’t keep it up after that. The horses are jabbed though, because thye live outside!
ETA: adding a trigger warning for discussion of animal harm.
I gotta say (from experience) there are just so so many bullies in professional dog work, and people who have terrible relationships with other humans because they are anti-authoritarian unless THEY are the authority. We used to see puppies all the time who hadn’t had the most basic shots – like parvo vaccines ffs – I once watched an entire litter of puppies shit themselves to death because their breeder didn’t believe in vaccines. And this was WAY before anti-vax became popular! It was just part of their culture! Dog breeders were some of the most uneducated, abusive, money-driven, nasty people I have ever had the displeasure to encounter.
Ditto about 30% of rescuers, btw. Selling animals – “rescuing” animals – it’s an easy lifestyle for people who can’t handle mainstream society.
#NotAllDogPeople obvs, I know good breeders and good rescuers – but there are scores of people who think just like this, and I still think about the dogs/puppies who suffered for it, and I get mad about it to this day.
/rant – and this is the SHORT version of it!!
God. I don’t think we give enough credit to vets and vet assistants, all they’re required to witness and handle professionally. Especially if they get into the profession because they love animals.
Oh yeah. The stuff vets have to deal with – the benign neglect alone is enough to make you cry. Then there’s the actively terrible people!
It’s really easy to get trapped in animal services – if you’re afraid other people won’t maintain a standard of care, you can get dragged down with the ship.
oh god that 30% of “rescuers” – we used to have a golden retriever who would occasionally make a bolt for the outside and basically do a circuit of the neighbourhood visiting all her doggy friends’ houses. Then she’d come back and hang out till we got her inside again; once she got stolen off our front lawn by a rescuer/animal hoarder (later found out she had about 27 animals in a very small one bedroom apartment) and when we made a big fuss in the paper and with the pound (who were aware of her and kind of resigned to “great, we’re dealing with this one again”), we got a mysterious phone call from someone who “found our dog walking around his neighbourhood and looked familiar from teh papers” adn could we come get her. Said neighbourhood is a twenty minute DRIVE from my parents’ house, way too far for her to get there, and someone had in the interval shaved her abdomen like they were going to get her spayed.
Same people stole my aunt’s cat who got outside (she’s one of the kind of cat that WILL NOT stay in the house, she sees daylight, she’s off) and rehomed her with a very nice and then very confused single dude in a nice condo. Where he was apparently feeding her a combination of the fancy expensive cat food and fresh fish. She was probably less happy to be rescued back to the same house as my very little cousins and their sticky hands.
Oh jeez. What a disaster in the making! Wow, the local animal control totally didn’t need THAT in their situation – they’re understaffed and have enough to deal with before you start adding in dog-stealing rescuers. :/
27 animals in any facility that isn’t professionally maintained by a TEAM is too many animals. Total hoarding!!
THAT BODYBUILDING FORUM.
I’ve been sitting here frozen in horror for a good 30 seconds, trying to muster the wherewithal to reply or at least move on with my life. Everything will now be divided into before I knew that and after I knew that.
Same here…
You know, I read somewhere – maybe here? – that even if you don’t want vaccines, get the rabies vaccine. Because if your pet bites someone, they can legally demand a rabies test for it, and rabies tests can only be performed on animals that have died. So having the rabies vaccination certificate can save your pet’s life, even if it’s never been exposed.
I can confirm the “rabies tests can only be performed on animals that have died” part of this, at least. (They have to take out the animal’s brain and treat it with a dye that binds to virus proteins.) http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/specific_groups/veterin…
I don’t know about the rest of it (can’t have furry pets because allergies) but rabies is an awful, awful way to die and I’m pretty sure the vaccination would be on the schedule for humans if it was even a little bit more common.
Yes, anyone looking to use this third-hand advice should definitely check the legal facts first! Or just get all the vaccines, which is easier.
The vet told me this when I brought my cats in for their first checkup. We opt to get the shot even though they’re indoor cats and have all the aggression of a single wilted leaf of iceberg lettuce.
We had a bat in our house, which was briefly unsupervised in a room with my 6-week-old infant (before the cats on the job alerted the adult humans, but failed to help in any useful fashion like CATCHING THE BAT), and had to go through a whole rigamarole that involved talking to the state health authorities and the CDC (!!), because four days earlier a sleeping five-year-old had been bitten by a bat (which was acting weird and fluttering and not flying) about two miles south of us, which the parent killed with a tennis racket, and the bat was confirmed positive for rabies in post-mortem testing. Further testing of bats confirmed the virus was currently active in the local bat colony. That family had an unvaccinated pet, which had to be destroyed.
Our not-so-brave cats were both up-to-date on their shots, so it involved a 10-minute call to the vet to go over the incident and confirm they were fine, and giving their rabies tag numbers to the state authorities for verification, and we didn’t even have to take them in to get looked at.
I’m not sure I could have dealt with the drama of human exposure of my BRAND NEW INFANT if we’d had to have our cats put down or quarantined at the same time!
This was in the middle of Illinois, not quite four years ago. (BTW, Illinois reports rabies exposures online back to 1990 and there have been 6 confirmed cases in dogs since then.) I have a surprising number of friends locally who’ve had to have a rabies series because of exposure to bats while they were sleeping.
As Laura knows I live in an essentially rabies-free area and had a clearly non-rabid baby bat in my house which the ONLY cat who had not had a rabies vaccine played with and I was horribly sick for 2 weeks with anxiety. (The multiple local vets I talked to were just like, yeah, whatever, I guess if it makes you feel better lock her in a bathroom during the quarantine period.) I got the other cats more shots and the unvaccinated cat is still unwilling to be caught and brought to a vet. But there have been no more bats and I would have heard about it had there been rabies in the area.
My cats are indoors cats, though.
Goodness, that sounds so very incredibly stressful. And yes, I think bat exposure is the biggest risk factor for rabies now both in the USA and in Northern Europe.
Hope you are all well now.
I lived in a church next door to y’all in Indiana during college. An actual church. It had actual bats in the actual belfry, and occasionally they would get out and flap madly around the house.
One of my roommates would CATCH THEM WITH A PILLOWCASE and let them out.
I thought it was badass at the time. Now? Now I think of all the possible exposure scenarios and shiver. I’m very glad you didn’t have to worry about your cats on top of all the other stuff.
I recently started taking my dog to the dog park, and she’s got all her shots. But if I ever find out that some fuckface is taking unvaccinated dogs to the dog park and exposing my dog to their viruses (which my dog may then carry home to animals with compromised immune systems), I will probably end up being arrested for assault.
I will visit you in jail. I will bring you anything that both delights you and can be smuggled in for you. And I will congratulate you for your amazing self control. I would *kill* anyone who endangered my dogs. You’d visit me on death row, right?
DOGS HAVE NO GOVERNMENT, WAKE UP SHEEPDOGGLE
Frankly, I imagine most dogs are anti-vaxx, unknowledgeable little monsters.
Unless they get to ride in the car to & from the doctor’s office.
Unless they get TREATS! My dog seriously loved going to the vet because EVERYONE wanted to give him a treat.
My dopey boy cat just got his rabies shot and didn’t like it one bit, but as soon as the vet started paying attention to my other cat he leaped back up on the exam table purring and trying to transfer the attention back where it belongs: on him. I’m looking at him like “Is your memory really that short, dude?”
My dog loves the treats at the vet — he tries so hard to leap up on the table, and he can never clear it.
I wish my stupid dog liked riding in the car, but nooooo, she spends the entire ride PETRIFIED that we are going to die any second, then promptly throws up her own body weight on any car ride more than about 10 minutes. It makes vet trips so much fun! I have multiple friends all “bring your dog they’ll love our yard!” nope. full of nope.
My dog will happily sit there derping while the vet gives her shots, but the minute he starts examining her paws, she whines and vocalizes like she’s being tortured. Less anti-vaxx than anti-nail clipping.
Ask your state government how many skunks have rabies, or bats, or squirrels. Not to mention the other disease they can carry.
Raccoons can have rabies AND thumbs and honestly we should all be on red alert.
For no reason other than it is my favorite ever raccoon gif:
They are also vicious predators who killed a number of my childhood chickens and rabbits. I admit to not understanding people who keep raccoons as pets.
Squerpes?
In the UK, it’s compulsory to vaccinate your dog against kennel cough if you send it to kennels (boarding). Only some kennels say that homoeopathic “vaccines”, which feature something completely useless they call “nosodes”, are sufficient instead. To my horror, they seem to be getting away with it. I noticed one when my mother, who tends to follow homoeopathy and similar bullshit, was looking was a kennels for her dog. I did report it, but I don’t know what happened.
What. What? Kennel cough is like, SO contagious, how could they even dream if containing it with – what on earth is a nosode? Tell you what, I would 10000% rather a vaccine from a company which makes them on the regular than some whackadoo homeopathic thing.
Mostly because I like my dogs without a wretched cough which sounds like miserably hurling, and snotty green noses, and maybe full-blown bronchitis or pneumonia – but you know, that’s just me. :/
Yep. And bear in mind that “homoeopathic” has a far more specific meaning in the UK than in the US, it just means that quackery where they dilute a substance until it’s no longer there and sell you sugar pills. Why it hasn’t been banned as massively fraudulent is beyond me. You can even get it on the NHS in a few areas. Prince Charles supports it, which doesn’t help. I think they’ll get rif of it eventually, the Advertising Standards Agency were doing a huge investigation a few years ago, although I know it didn’t get anywhere when I reported a place that was suggesting you use homoeopathic remedies instead of going to the doctor for such things as burns, some of which can be severe, and UTIs.
As for my mother, she would do things like give the dog manuka honey and claim it had all sorts of health benefits, and I was really worried that she was doing this in place of vet treatment at times. The dog certainly got a fair bit of vet treatment and lived to 16, so she was probably OK. But if the anti-vax movement had come in when I was a baby, I am certain I wouldn’t have been vaccinated.
All caps GENETICS? That looks like an acronym!
Giving
Everyone
No
Exceptions
This
Idiotic
Crackpot
Spiel
Yes, that’s probably it.
Someone has surely said this already but I feel like shouting:
HUMAN RABIES IS THE MOST DEADLY INFECTIOUS DISEASE, IF YOU GET IT YOU WILL SURELY DIE, THE VACCINE IS LITERALLY THE ONLY PROTECTION WE HAVE. Rabies is so much worse than having the government hypothetically search your house, like so so so much worse! This is not a subject to play politics with!!!
Fortunately the vaccine for after you’re potentially exposed to rabies is a lot less painful than it used to be. Like, I still wouldn’t want to repeat the experience, but it was way better than the stories I remember from the recent past about abdominal shots.
Worldwide, it’s a huge killer, mainly of children. The stats on it are horrifying and tragic, and it is a ghastly way for toddlers to die.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/4/14-13604…
RABIES IS TERRIFYING, Taxes, less so.
Remarkably, science marches on! There is now an actual rabies treatment, known as the “Milwaukee protocol,” that has enabled people infected with rabies to recover without vaccination, even after symptoms develop! The patient is placed into a medically induced coma and treated with insanely powerful antiviral drugs. Currently the treatment has a success (that is, survival) rate of roughly 15%, and when effective, results in only mild brain damage!
Of course the takeaway for some people is going to be: “there is a treatment for rabies, therefore no need to mess with those dangerous vaccines.” This could actually be counterproductive in the long run. Maybe it would be prudent to devise an urban legend that the rabies treatment is a government conspiracy that programs the brain to pay more taxes, or something. “The Milwaukee Protocol” sounds suspiciously like a Robert Ludlum novel.
I had to get rabies shots recently and everyone was telling me about this. The success rate is really low, though–I think that 15% number includes the people who left the hospital but then died soon after, and even if not, that’s still 85% mortality. The woman in Milwaukee who was the original patient is amazingly fine, and there are a few other survivors that seem to be legit. But it’s a long, complicated, expensive, invasive course of treatment that involves going into a coma, and the medical community seems to have very low confidence in it. If you have access to medical care of a caliber that could try the Milwaukee Protocol, you definitely have access to the vaccine! It’s worth it even if you were bitten by an animal you think probably wasn’t rabid!
Oh yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. I just think it’s kind of mind-boggling that anyone at all has survived rabies, even if the treatment is hugely unreliable. Of course it wouldn’t make any sense to view the treatment as an excuse to avoid the vaccine. But apparently people can be a lot more senseless about a lot more things than I’d ever suspected. Case in point: dog anti-vaccination. Practically speaking, rabies is still basically a death sentence. I’m glad to hear you got the shots. Now let’s have no more of this coyote wrestling. Just let them take the chicken bones, okay?
Sorry if that seemed combative; I definitely spent, like, a whole afternoon googling this stuff after my friends who are Radiolab fans told me what they half-remembered about it, and then I got huffy about how they’d been all “miracle cure!” and apparently it hardly ever works. This is, like. The randomest thing to get irritated about.
It was all fascinating reading, though! I had never given much thought to rabies before, and when I started reading about it I was like HOLY COW WHY WERE WE EVER WILLING TO DOMESTICATE DOGS.
Anyway, it’s Friday, that’s enough capslock, everybody remember that if a strange dog bites you then you should get its health info from the owner and not dazedly tell him you’re fine while he cycles away!
You are NOT a Doctor of Veternarian Medicine this is pure golden madness
I surely love my doggie
but my feelings are quite strong;
I’d rather become rabid
than admit that I am wrong
OBSERVITABLE QUESTIONS.
Cujo is one of Stephen King’s scariest books because THAT SHIT COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN.
Wasn’t the dog possessed in the book? Some sort of evil entity that they could smell in the kid’s closet? It’s been awhile since I read that.
It’s kind of ambiguous. There’s a lot from the dog’s point of view, though, that just sounds like plain ol’ rabies. The thing in the kid’s closet appears to be an unrelated nasty.
I thought it’s been scientifically proven (via brain MRI or some such) that our dogs actually DO love us back? I read it on Tumblr, so it must be true.
Anecdotally, my dog gives me THE most passive-aggressive looks if she’s laying on the floor and wants to put her head in my lap and I’m nnot getting with the program. Also yesterday, while I was sewing, she walked up to me, licked my elbow, and then walked away. You will NEVER convince me that she isn’t madly in love with me, bless her rabies-immune heart!
Aww. More dog stories, please!
I am minion to a cat, where the debate about whether they love us or not rages even more strongly, since cats are generally less demonstrative and snootier than dogs. And I think they do. My cat does all sorts of little affectionate things, and sometimes bosses me back to bed when I’ve overdone it and need to rest (I have severe ME/CFS). And yes, I know the passive-aggressive looks when Herself wants a cuddle and I am not in the approved Cat Mattress Position. She has me very well trained, as I have to spend a lot of the day in bed so she gets plenty of opportunity. She will walk up to the bed and chirrup. I obediently turn onto my back and make sure there is some duvet laid over me for her to sit on, and then she jumps up, walks along me while fixing me sternly with her eye, spends five minutes doing the “but do I actually WANT to lie on this human?” dithering, preferably while blocking my view of the TV, then curls up on me and the lovefest commences. You must pet my nose! And my chin! And my cheeks! And my chin, and I will tilt my head until my nose is straight up in the air so that you may do so! Yes, yes, this is the way, you are wonderful! So maybe it’s love, or maybe she is just addicted to having her little head petted thoroughly, but I think there’s definite affection, and she misses us when we are away. She even waits patiently for me when I go to the loo, and then crawls back on for more cuddles. Being largely bedbound has a great upside when you have a cat! Apart from when you’re dying for the loo and you don’t want to move because the cat is being particularly cute, of course.
As for sewing, my cat has a basket right on my sewing desk. It’s a good spot for her to snooze or supervise the room in general, and it means that I can reach out and stroke her on and off while I’m sewing (I sew by hand). There are also photos of her sitting determinedly on my lap under the quilting frame, refusing to budge. In the first photo she looks very comfortable and I have the quilt off over to one side because I don’t want to bother, or indeed smother, her. In the other two photos I’ve decided, “Sod this, my back’s starting to hurt,” so the Q-snap frame is back in its proper position and you can just see a bit of cat sitting underneath looking somewhat put out, but clinging on for all she’s worth. Maybe she thought the quilt was a rival for my affections? Apparently it’s quite traditional for cats to “help” with quilting, and I’m just lucky that she doesn’t try to eat bits of thread, or interfere in any way worse than walking over my sewing desk from time to time.
Oh, Probably. Pretty much all I remember is being yelled in a car with a slavering dog on the hood, which impacted me greatly because a beloved dog I had as a child developed epilepsy and I thought he was trying to attack me before they took him away to be put down.
I just lost so much time reading this site. Some more gems:
“I am not a God; I just do the best I can. Sometimes, things happen and I do not feel that I should be penalized for such things.”
“Our pups dont get traumatized for the most part. Our pups have been chosen from test scores which include traumatizing pups by slamming down a stack of books, throwing penny cans, keys and shooting off guns.” (IS THIS A THING? idk, my delicate Canadian sensibilities are offended by the idea of shooting guns around puppies as a trauma test.)
“How dare they mold me (a person that they have not met, that they do not know) into something that they have conjured up in their weak, selfish and hateful minds. What they say and do, I have no control over and I will not worry myself about…”
“I dont have to prove to anyone that i love my dogs. My belief is that I will see them again. I shall be surrounded by over 3 thousand (not virgins, but) dogs…”
Did you read the “About Founder” page??
I got as far as “This bitch was a mellow dog but could not be used as a brood bitch or a mom, as she always ate her offspring” before I stopped. Because gross, but also because holy shit what an unnecessarily tl;dr page.
Are those actual quotes? Christ. See, I spend a fair amount of time being self-conscious about how I treat other people, but then I learn about actual horrible people and just think, man, I should cut myself some slack.
Oh yeah, for some of the hardcore schutzhund and hunting dog communities – and k9 officers – gun training is totally common. Pick the calmest puppy and go to work. Sounds nuts, and many dogs (justifiably) will have nothing to do with it, but they get weeded out into pet homes instead of working.
OF course, this lady is also bonkers.
They run off instincts; behavioral instincts and genetic instincts that are passed down from the beginning of that particular species existence.
Aw, lady, I got some real bad news for you about love.
I had a roommate once who would argue that dogs didnt actually understand human words. They just recognized the sounds of the words and remembered the actions that were associated with those sounds.
Behavioral and genetic instincts lift us up where we belong
***
Behavioral and genetic instincts, soft as an easy chair
***
Bring me a higher behavioral/genetic instinct
“These arguments in the FAQ are even better than the time those guys on a bodybuilding forum couldn’t agree how many days there were in the week.”
The only thing Mallory has ever been wrong about. Nothing is funnier than the days-in-a-week argument.
Science proves that your dog does love you: http://www.amazon.com/How-Dogs-Love-Us-Neuroscien…
Oh, you poor things!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh *tiny screams of joy*
I don’t believe this has already been posted, but here’s an article outlining some very adorable research that supports the theory that animals can love. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04…