Pet owners will soon get a break on vaccinations for their four-legged pals. On December 1, the Arkansas Department of Health announced changes to the Rabies Control Act - passed by the Arkansas Legislature - allowing veterinarians and pet owners the ability to choose whether or not to use a one-year vaccine or a three-year vaccine for the rabies virus.

Under the act’s new rules that go into effect January 1, all dogs and cats four months or age or older will be required to have a rabies vaccination and a rabies booster shot one year later. After that shot, pet owners will have the choice of vaccinating their pets for rabies each year or every three years. There is also a four-year rabies vaccine for cats, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.

Currently, the Rabies Control Act has no age limit for initial vaccinations and animals must be vaccinated annually for the deadly virus. Although rabies exists primarily in wildlife, mainly skunks and bats in Arkansas, pets canbecome infected with the virus if they become bitten by an infected animal, Susan Weinstein, state public health veterinarian with the Arkansas Department of Health, said.

The biggest issue Arkansas has with rabies occurs when pet owners choose not to vaccinate their dogs or cats at all, Weinstein said. “The two biggest (reasons that the vaccinations are important), I think, are there are still a great deal of cases of rabies in Arkansas and people can get it. Once people get (rabies), there are very few cases of people surviving it,” Dr. Tammy Nixon, a veterinarian with Osage Animal Hospital in Bentonville, said. Each year, Nixon sees several cases of rabies, mostly in wild animals such as skunks, she said.

The good thing about allowing pet owners to vaccinate for rabies every three years instead of each year is the changes will make vaccinations less stressful on pets and on their owner’s pocketbooks, Nixon said. The cost of the annual rabies vaccination is about $12 and varies from clinic to clinic, Nixon said. Nixon was unsure how much thethree-year vaccine will cost but feels it will be cheaper for pet owners over the course of the three years.

“What we are going to find (when the Rabies Control Act changes go into effect) is probably 99 percent of veterinarians are going to go to the three-year vaccine,” Dr. Doug Parker, a veterinarian at Sugar Creek Animal Hospital, said.

“Research has shown that we have the same immunity for a longer duration with the threeyear vaccine,” Parker said. “Sometimes I feel like we administer too many vaccines too often. If we can get the same duration of immunity with a threeyear vaccine, that is a good thing.”

Although pet owners will now be able to choose to vaccinate their pets against rabies for three years, there are other vaccinations, such as the kennel cough vaccine, that are needed annually, Parker said. Annual physicals are still recommended for all pets because oftentimes those checkups may catch an illness before it becomes a major problem, Parker said.

News, Pages 3 on 12/30/2009