Pet Care | Pet Health | Vaccinations
Your Pet Needs to Get the Rabies Vaccine…
And you might want to also
Rabies Virus (RV)
A while back, I wrote an article on the importance of vaccinating your pet (click the link). In that article, I discussed the facts of the vaccine, but I want to elaborate on why your pet needs their annual rabies vaccine.
Severity
Rabies is always fatal and there is absolutely NO CURE! Animals infected can die in ten days or less. It can be transmitted through saliva, most commonly spread through bites of the infected animal. Its symptoms include acute infectious encephalitis, changed mentation, aggression, paralysis, drooling, fear and sensitivity to light, self-mutilation, fever, and shakes. This is true for animals and humans, since rabies is a zoonotic disease (all warm-blooded animals).
Vaccine
This is a core vaccine for most pets. According to the AVMA, a core vaccine means “protect from diseases that are endemic to a region, those with potential public health significance, required by law, virulent/highly infectious, and/or those posing a risk of severe disease”.
You need proof of a current rabies vaccine for a pet license, especially required for dogs. It might also be required if you want to take your pet anywhere; including a flight, dog park, sporting event, etc. It is a public health measure. Usually your dog or cat will get a rabies tag that you can add to their collar, which comes with the vaccine.
The human rabies vaccine is much more expensive, around $500 — $1,500. The price depends where you go and this vaccine is not given at all pharmacies. Not every human needs this vaccine, but it is recommended for people working with animals to get it.
FUN FACT: Ferrets have their own set of rabies vaccinations.
Testing for Rabies
The test for rabies is a lot more gruesome than testing for basically every other disease. If an animal has symptoms of the rabies disease, there are usually no chances taken. The animal’s head is cut off and sent to lab, where they test the brain tissue to see if the animal was infected.
Please protect your pet, yourself, and everyone around you and get your pet vaccinated!
