Veterinarians at this year’s Fetch National Harbor conference heard a finding that would not surprise anyone who has stood at a clinic counter: owners who turn down a dog vaccine usually aren’t against vaccines. They just don’t think their dog needs that one.
Jessica Pritchard, a veterinary internist, presented the research. Her team kept meeting dogs that had survived leptospirosis, sometimes after a long hospital stay, whose owners still declined the vaccine that prevents it. She also wondered how much overlap there was between owners hesitant about their own shots and owners hesitant about their pets’.
So they adapted the World Health Organization’s vaccine hesitancy scale for dogs and surveyed owners at wellness appointments across Wisconsin in the summer of 2022. The most common reason owners gave for declining was a belief that the vaccine wasn’t medically necessary, with worry about side effects second and cost third. Among owners who skipped leptospirosis or Lyme vaccines, more than half simply didn’t believe their dog was at risk. Households hesitant about human vaccines tended to be hesitant about dog vaccines too.
What this means for your dog: the barrier is usually a risk question rather than a philosophical one, and risk questions have answers. Ask your vet directly whether leptospirosis or Lyme disease is a real threat where you live and how your dog spends its days, because a clear recommendation lands differently than a passing mention that a vaccine exists. Cost was the third most common reason owners gave, and a $250 million push to make vet care easier to afford is funding low-cost clinics now.
If your dog swims, drinks from puddles, or crashes through tall grass, have that conversation before the next appointment. Tick season is running longer than it used to, and the diseases that come with it are the ones owners underestimate most.