LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

A final and interesting conversation I had with a client was as they made COVID-19 vaccines in under a year, could new dog vaccines be developed as fast? Her friend had lost a dog to Alabama rot and she wondered if the emerging technology could help develop a vaccine. Sadly, the answer is probably no. The COVID jabs were based on research done for other coronaviruses, and their rapid development was helped by vast sums of money being invested by international governments. Usually, drug and vaccine development is a slow process due to the difficulty of raising money for each stage of the research. Added to that, we still don’t know the causative agent of Alabama rot. That said, the COVID vaccines do introduce new technology, which tells the body to make a safe version of part of the virus for a short period of time, and this may open up new possibilities for canine vaccination in the future.