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Permalink Reply by Jennifer on April 22, 2009 at 11:41am

Molly's vet changed their vaccines after her second set of shots--the first two had corona, and the last two had lepto. I noticed she was a bit more lethargic after the lepto shots, but she did not have any of the adverse reactions that you tend to hear about with lepto.

Obviously you won't know until he gets his shots, but I wouldn't be too concerned if he has no prior history of vaccine reactions.

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Permalink Reply by Ginny and Diggory on April 22, 2009 at 4:44pm

Our neighbor's four-year-old airedale, Tess, recently died after a lepto vaccine (was probably 6 months ago). Apparently, it sent her immune system into overdrive and her white blood cells started to attack her healthy red blood cells. She went into renal failure and eventually had to be put down. She was healthy before that. It was very sad, their dogs are like their children. Their other airedale, Hagrid, also reacted to the vaccine and his liver counts showed his liver was beginning to fail, but they were able to turn it around before he got as bad as Tess. I got Ginny the lepto vaccine last year, but I don't think I will again this year. Our vet thinks it may be unnecessary and that if she does have some exposure to rivers/lakes that they can sort of build up a tolerance for lepto.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy on April 22, 2009 at 5:44pm

I live in Maine and there have been cases of the disease. We do live in a rural area where Marty could be exposed to infected wildlife. Our vet offers the vaccine but doesn't push to have your dog vaccinated. Thank you all for your advice and information. We will need to rethink giving Marty the vaccine.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Stasky on April 22, 2009 at 7:46pm

There used to be alot of reactions to the lepto vacc-pfizers' new lepto vacc covers more of the lepto bacteria (there are at least 6) and their new vacc covers 4 of those, and alot less reaction-just don't overwhelm your dogs' immune system with too many vacc at one time-is the vets' vacc protcol 5 or 7 different things in 1 vacc (distemper, parvo, lepto,corona, ect.), or is it less-each additive stresses the immune system alittle more. In our area (Chgo) and at our practice, we've had a few deaths last year and several deaths from lepto this year so far

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Permalink Reply by Nancy on April 23, 2009 at 6:09am

Thank you Karen. My vet gives the lepto. vaccine by itself not combined with the other vaccinations. So would you reccomend getting the vaccine?

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Permalink Reply by Karen Stasky on April 23, 2009 at 9:58am

If your vet of aware of lepto in your area and your dog is in areas where wildlife is-it's carried by rats,oppossum, raccoon, and coyotes, and can be picked up from wet areas-puddles or open water-if it's on the dogs feet and they clean them, they could be expposed-if the organism (lepto) dries, it dies. It is treatable if caught early, but it's kind of hard because of the vague sypmtoms-it is also a zoonostic, so people can get it

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