Will Falconer, DVM Moderator
Hi Janie,
I think you've got a fair amount of it, yes. There's little efficacy in repeating vaccines, though the research shows a booster effect here in previously vaccinated dogs. Titers clearly increased in response.
The other piece is that every vaccine, even the very first, is the injection of foreign disease material into the body. The route is one that the immune system has never known before: suddenly it's there in the blood, bypassing all the natural defense gates Nature has set up.
That sets up "immune confusion" that can easily become chronic, and spans the bodily systems from allergic skin/ear disease to brain inflammation like seizures or ADD or suspicion or paralyzing fear. Autoimmune disease, attack on one's own bodily cells, is not uncommon after vaccination, as my posts about little Tigger addressed in How Safe is Your Pet from “Just a Rabies Vaccine?”
All of this is why I consider vaccination the decision that animal folks need to think most clearly about. It's not in any sense the benign procedure that's painted by Big Pharma and Dr. WhiteCoat.