Original email posted to sfraw:

What is your rationale for refusing to vaccinate your dog, esp. for rabies? And if you don't vaccinate for rabies, what measures can you or do you take to prevent it? Sorry if this is old hat for the rest of you, but I find this shocking. I'll wait for your response before I go into full judgmental mode, but...

A Response: ...

1--My one dog has chronic autoimmune issues that will be there for life (according to western medicine anyway). BY even the vax manufacturers policy only healthy dogs are supposed to be vaccinated, EVER. My dog will never be healthy, therefore he should never be vaccinated.

2--There is absolutely NO rabies epidemic around here, or anywhere else in the country for that matter. There has not been a rabies positive dog or cat in my county in 4 years!! Not a single one, with over 45,000 new dogs in the county every year. All the rabies exposures to humans in the recent past have been from bats.

3--my dog is a mostly indoor dog, he is not offleash in public areas, he is never going to encounter rabid wildlife.

4--vaccines are no guarantee of immunity, many, many dogs with the vaccine get the disease. I would rather take my chances with the disease (see below).

5--vaccines do not protect against disease, the immune system does. Vaccines suppress and injure the immune system and have been PROVEN to cause things like cancer, HOD, autoimmune mediated thyroiditis in animals and autism in people. Among many, many other things. Vaccines are not safe. The way to build disease resistance is to support the immune system with proper diet, exercise, mental and physical stimulation, and NOT weaken it with flea/tick poisons or vaccines.

5.5--And even if they don't get some horrible disease, there is always vaccinosis--a term which refers to the myriad of subclinical chronic symptoms caused by vaccines. Rabies, for example, turned my happy go lucky dog park loving submissive 8 month old female into a sketchy, dog aggressive, separation anxiety having, water obsessed, fence fighting, pushy, whining, nut with sensitive feet. Her distemper/parvo shot at 1 year gave her IBD. My male got demodex mange and became highly allergic after his last parvo/distemper shot combined with Frontline, which is around when I started studying this issue. His temperament is rock solid, it's the best thing about him, and Ill be damned if I'll let that be screwed up due to the greed of some and the ignorance of others. I've poured lots of money, time and effort into fixing them via homeopathy, but one vax and we're back at square one. NO THANK YOU.

6--My other dog has been vaccinated twice and will not be again. There have been challenge studies done that prove vaccines last for WAY longer than 1-3 years, most of them last for 7-10 years or more. Immunity is measured incorrectly by most "authorities"--In fact, once immunity has been gained it is never lost, because immunity is not a function of how many antibodies exist in the blood (as measurable by titers) but by immune memory cells, which as of this date we have not found a way to measure yet. 8--rabies is a self limiting disease, because it kills it's host. A host is only infectious for 10 days before it DIES (that is why they do the quarantine for 10 days after a dog bite--if the dog is still alive after that, it wasn't infectious when it bit). Any disease that kills its host so quickly is bound to be self limiting and henceforth very hard to become an "epidemic".

So that's why I don't vaccinate. As for what measures I take to prevent it, that's kind of self explanatory in that I build their immune system with raw food, exercise, and homeopathy to keep them able to fight anything that comes along. There is almost nothing to prevent, but to answer more literally--I keep my dogs away from strange dogs and strange people, (especially bats ), they don't go to dog parks. So before you go into "full judgmental mode", consider that what you've been told about vaccination is not unlike what you were told about kibble--"it's good for you and your dog, we know what we're doing, the alternatives are highly dangerous, we know what's best, just sit back and let us make the decisions and we'll make it nice and convenient for you so you don't have to worry about it."
Bullshit.

For more info and to back up what I said:
www.caberfeidh.com/Revax (and all of sfraw member Christie Keith's other articles on vaccination on her wonderful site). www.truthaboutvaccines.org

And join the yahoo lists BeyondVaccination and TruthAboutVaccines. Anyone have anything to add?

L