Your puppies health is your responsibility

In recent years there has been a trend towards "natural" approaches and products in many aspects of our lives This has lead to a healthy debate about organic foodstuffs, alternative medicine and holistic living, it has also had an impact in the world of dogs where an increasing number of owners have started to consider homeopathic remedies in place of modern drugs. Most sensible people will recognise the overuse of antibiotics in farmed animals, the misuse of hormones in food producing livestock and the lack of recognition given to alternative healing. Whilst acknowledging the benefits of a natural approach to health it is not appropriate to turn ones back on the many proven successes of conventional science and we do not support the use of "nosodes", so called natural alternatives to the inoculations given to puppies and dogs to prevent the contraction of the most severe, infectious canine diseases. There are those lucky enough to have kept dogs for many years without the administration and cost of inoculation and there are some who will strongly disagree with our views on this matter, but we are asked the question frequently enough to offer our opinion.

As breeders we would be unwilling let a border collie or golden retiever puppy go to a home where he or she would not be protected by inoculation. Like most dedicated breeders we do not routinely vaccinate our puppies before they go to their new homes, first innoculations are currently given at 8 weeks, by which time most puppies will already be in their new homes. There is no educated suggestion that this is too young, clinical trials and wide usage throughout the country suggest otherwise, no vet should be sceptical about this unless he is very out of date with current practice. Remember that before vaccines can be marketed they must under go very through clinical trials and whilst these are not foolproof they do provide a very high degree of safety, Homeopathic Nosodes have undergone no trials whatsoever for either safety (unlikely to be an issue) or efficacy (a big issue). Nosodes are very fashionable at the moment largely because of the low incidence of the usual canine diseases, however this low incidence is almost certainly due to the very high instance of inoculation carried out by the responsible dog owning community.

In Scandinavia only a few years ago many dog owners switched to homeopathic protection or even no protection at all believing this was better than "interfering" with the natural immune system, as a result there was a full blown epidemic of Parvovirus and Distemper with horrifying scenes that fortunately we have not seen on a great scale here for over twenty five years.

The key question is this, would you have your children inoculated as is the recommended practice? Indeed would you consider inoculating yourself and your family if you go on holiday to a part of the world for which inoculations are recommended? Most people would not forego your own safety or that of your children by only relying on untried and tested homeopathic remedies alone. If that is so why are people prepared to put a puppy at risk where they would be certain to protect themselves. In the recent past a lady we know well bought a puppy from a reputable breeder, within days of bringing him home he was dead, the pathology report showed hepatitis as the killer, it transpired that the breeder only used Nosodes, so the pup's mother has never been inoculated, she no immunity and hence had passed no immunity on to the pup, the lady who had bought the puppy had several other dogs, including a puppy too young to be inoculated, all who were unaffected, because either their inoculations were up to date or in the case of the young pup, because he had inherited immunity from his inoculated dam.