Page 6 - Spring 21

4
Why I love doing booster vaccinations By Chris Aukland, UK
Well, perhaps love is too strong a word for it, so that opening statement is not entirely true...
I have been working as a vet for 35 years and using homeopathy in practice for most of this time. I have worked in a variety of environments sometimes seeing referral only cases for homeopathy and for the last number of years working in the local small animal veterinary practice being a general practitioner. Here I weave in homeopathy using an integrated holistic approach.
With a quick Google search I am reliably informed that in 2018 there were around 9 million dogs and 8 million cats in the UK. (RSPCA). Another check informs me that 75% of dogs and 65% of cats receive a primary vaccine course. Further 66% of owners go on to have regular annual booster vaccinations. So that is a lot of pets receiving a lot of vaccines every year in the UK. It happens.
Back in Forest Row, we have a practice serving a slightly skewed pet owning population. For those that don’t know, Forest Row has a rather alternative bias in the human population. We have three independently working homeopathic vets. We alarmed the establishment by having the highest outbreak of measles in children a year or two ago (measles is seen differently by the parents of children that go to the local Steiner school). For me, it is more common to ask the owner what remedies they have already given, rather than asking if they are interested in homeopathy.
In any given year I will see several hundred pets coming in for their annual check up, often including a vaccination.
Let’s just pause there and reflect on the question “what are we really doing in practice?”. What is our role?
Much of what is exciting and challenging about being a
vet is sorting problems out. Dog with broken bone – mend it. Puppy with vomiting and diarrhoea – treat it. Big lump developing – cut it out. Cat with pancreatitis – work it up, hospitalise, fluids, naso-gastric feeding, whole bunch of medications, then send it home happy. Job done. It is what we do. Only one teensy-weensy issue... the poor old pet has to be ill in the first place for us to be treating it.
Back on the farm, there is a different mind-set. Farmers don’t want their livestock to be ill in the first place and a lot more energy goes into creating systems that help them stay healthy and disease free (at least on the farms I work with). Which makes a lot of sense.
If we borrow from the farm world and apply this attitude to small animal practice we can see things differently. Rather than having a whole bunch of patients that are sick and need treating, be that with conventional treatments or homeopathic remedies, what if we looked at our pets as a rather unusual flock/herd to be cared for in ways that engender health and minimised disease? And saw the owners as stockmen/women who needed to be educated on how best to achieve this?
Many of you will be familiar with the Three Phase Model of Health that I have written about in the past. Quick summary:
• Green - for happy health animals, good diet, good lifestyle, good husbandry.
• Amber - for starting to go out of balance.
• Red - for animals that have become quite ill, likely
needing veterinary attention.
The take-home-message being, the better we can manage Green and Amber, the less time the animal is in the Red.