For years, vaccines for your pets, whether dogs or cats, were hardly ever an issue. Humans would vaccinate their pets for rabies, parvovirus, distemper, or other diseases. These diseases were not something to ignore — they could kill them. And the deaths are heart-wrenching — the pets suffer from these vaccine-preventable diseases.

But hesitancy to vaccinate children and adults began to grow over the past few years, and that has led to an alarming increase in humans denying vaccines for their pets.

This post will examine this issue and why your pets should be vaccinated. It’s not a difficult choice.

Pets and vaccines

In a New York Times article from 27 October 2025, Emily Anthes and Teddy Rosenbluth wrote:

In the four years since she opened her own veterinary practice, Dr. Kelly McGuire has seen her fair share of heartbreaking cases.

There was the dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial disease often carried by rodents. Several of her canine patients had come down with such severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition,” said Dr. McGuire, who owns Wildflower Veterinary Hospital in Brighton, Colo. And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had been forced to euthanize a 20-week-old puppy that was having seizures.

The deaths were wrenching, especially because they were preventable: Those pets would likely have survived had they received all their recommended vaccines.

For most of her career, vaccination was a routine, unremarkable part of Dr. McGuire’s work as a small animal veterinarian. But after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, she found herself having long, sometimes adversarial discussions with pet owners about the safety and necessity of vaccines. Clients accused her of pushing the vaccines to line her own pockets. And, increasingly, pet owners insisted on spacing out shots or refused vaccines altogether, including for deadly and incurable viruses like rabies.

Oh, where have I heard that oft-repeated claim that healthcare professionals (including veterinarians) are lining their pockets because of vaccines? Right, every time anti-vaxxers open their mouths.

Let’s look at rabies. If a rabid animal bites your dog or cat, they can develop rabies. There is no cure for rabies — the pet will have to be euthanized. If you do not euthanize the pet, they will die painfully and horribly soon after symptoms develop.

Generally, there are laws in most localities that require pets to be vaccinated, but it is loosely enforced. Of course, there is a growing anti-mandate movement for vaccines for pets.

Anthes and Rosenbluth also wrote that the usual suspects who are anti-vaccine for humans are spreading their claims about vaccines for pets. For example, the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, “recently published a book about what it called the ‘tremendous harm’ caused by annual vaccines in pets.”

Why am I not surprised by this?

A lot of the human vaccine hesitancy beliefs are filtering into discussions about pet vaccinations. Again, Anthese and Rosenbluth wrote that “vaccines could lead to cognitive and behavioral changes in their pets, including conditions like autism.”

As I’ve written a thousand times, vaccines do not cause autism. And there is no evidence whatsoever that shows pet vaccinations lead to cognitive or behavioral changes.

Just like what we observe in human vaccine hesitancy, people tend to overestimate the risks while underestimating the benefits. Part of the reason, like we have done with human vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, we have nearly eradicated rabies and parvovirus, so people think there is no risk. Or that we pro-vaccine types are overstating the risk.

It appears that veterinarians are having the same exact conversation with pet owners as pediatricians have with parents. Vaccines are safe and they prevent diseases. And they do not cause autism.

Vaccination rates for pets

So, what are the vaccination rates for pets?

In two published articles in the American Journal of Veterinary Research and Vaccine, Simon F Haeder, PhD, MPA, Department of Health Policy & Management, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, says that vaccine hesitancy is filtering from humans to their pets.

Dr. Haeder quantified resistance (or lack thereof) to the vaccination of pets through large surveys.

There is good news. The vast majority of cats and dogs have received their core vaccines — that is, pets received the vaccines recommended for all cats and dogs. For dogs, those vaccines are for rabies, leptospira, distemper, adenovirus, parvovirus, and parainfluenza. For cats, these include feline calicivirus (FCV), feline herpesvirus-1 (FHV-1), feline panleukopenia (FPV), feline leukemia (FeLV), and rabies.

There were other interesting data from Dr. Haeder’s research:

1. Around 75% of pet owners trust their veterinarians’ recommendations for vaccines.
2. Unfortunately, the study identified 21.7% of dog and 25.9% of cat owners as vaccine-hesitant. Although it’s not easy to compare directly, the human vaccination rate in the USA for recommended vaccines is around 90%, according to recent data.
3. Over 80% of dog and cat owners supported vaccination requirements for core and non-core vaccines.
4. Unfortunately, Dr. Haeder identified 22% of dog owners and 26% of cat owners as vaccine-hesitant. That mirrors what we’ve observed for humans.
5. He found that 4% of dogs and 12% of cats were unvaccinated against rabies. This disease is a death sentence for pets, because if an unvaccinated pet bites a person, that animal needs to be euthanized to determine its rabies status. I’m glad that the number is relatively low, but it should be a 0% unvaccinated rate for these pets.
6. Other vaccines, for example, against parvovirus and distemper, were lower.
7. Vaccine-hesitant pet owners seem to share the same vaccine myths as they have for human vaccines. Around 53% were concerned about vaccine safety, 54% about side effects, and about 51% about effectiveness.

Summary

The American Veterinary Medical Association lists the reasons to get your pets vaccinated.

• First, unvaccinated pets are at risk from life-threatening diseases that are found in wildlife, especially rabies. Vaccines prevent these diseases.
• Second, reputable pet boarding, daycare, and training services require pets to be vaccinated to protect the humans involved and other animals in their care.
• Third, many local and state laws require pets, including indoor-only pets, to be vaccinated against certain diseases, usually the core vaccines.
• Fourth, some of these pet diseases can not only be transmitted to other animals but also to humans. Like rabies.

Vaccinations prevent pet diseases, many of which require costly treatments. And some of these diseases can lead to the death of the beloved pet.

You may say “my pet never goes outside,” but that’s not a guarantee. How many of you have had a cat or dog bolt out of a doorway into the wild, where they can be bitten by a rabid animal?

Pet vaccines are safe. They are effective. And they can save the life of your pet.

Citations

• Haeder SF. Assessing vaccine hesitancy and support for vaccination requirements for pets and potential Spillovers from humans. Vaccine. 2023 Nov 30;41(49):7322-7332. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.10.061. Epub 2023 Nov 5. PMID: 37935596.
• Haeder SF. Exploratory assessment of the parent attitudes about childhood vaccines survey tool to assess vaccine hesitancy and pet vaccination status among pet owners. Am J Vet Res. 2024 Dec 5;86(2):ajvr.24.06.0163. doi: 10.2460/ajvr.24.06.0163. PMID: 39637558.