PetLvr.com - [The Blog]

As worldwide financial panic continues, so does our series on pet ownership in a down economy. Last time, we talked about making pet toys at home. That’s a great way to save some money, but you can’t make everything your pets need. For example, vet care is an absolute necessity. This time, we’ll look at ways to save on the necessities that you can’t make at home.

Vet Care Deals

In an emergency, there’s no time to worry about price. But when your pet is due for a routine procedure like a spay/neuter or vaccinations, you have many options. Start by throwing the idea that your pet needs to get all his or her yearly vaccinations at once out the window. It’s easier on the immune system to give vaccines one at a time, with about three weeks between jabs to recover. Unless doing vaccinations separately would result in a larger total number of injections, it’s okay to do one at a time for adult pets. This gives you the leeway to budget monthly for shots, and to go to monthly low-cost clinics for those immunizations. For example, Petco stores host vaccination clinics monthly in most areas.

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Ferrets are typically vaccinated against rabies and canine distemper

The first is rare, even rarer in ferrets. But the fear of catching rabies from a bite is so intense that many will choose to get the shot for their ferret anyway. It helps protect the animal, the owner and ward off lawsuits from visitors who might accidentally get their fingers in a ferret’s playful mouth.

Canine distemper is much less rare, and it is airborne. So even if your ferret never comes in contact with another animal, the vaccination is important. Canine distemper can be transmitted from one ferret to another (or a dog to a ferret) by a sneeze. It survives in the air fully long enough to infect the animal. There are other transmission routes, as well.

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Like much else today, whether to give your dog vaccinations is a matter of some controversy. Getting objective information is difficult because there are so many advocates on both sides of the question. Some even sound reasonable. Those who might be concerned about the issue will want to do their own research to get as clear a view as possible.

What is indisputable is that prior to the development of vaccines, many breeds died of infectious diseases. After their development and widespread use, deaths due to viruses were reduced.

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