Vets, Vaccinations and Decisions

At the Vet

As with human babies, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made about managing our animal's  health care.  We are bombarded daily with all sorts of pronouncements and 'studies' that influence every decision we make in our daily lives.  
There are several schools of thought about when to vaccinate, what to vaccinate, when to neuter and what to feed our animals.  I won't try to summarize them all. If you want in depth information Google this. You will find as I did, that there are a myriad of opinions, each with appropriate studies to reinforce the opinion and guilt trip if you don't buy into it.
Bailey's breeder is a case in point. She is wary of too many vaccinations for puppies and dogs. She also didn't want me to take the puppy to the vet before 3 months.She says they can get parvo just from going to the vet. She gave me enough vaccine to administer myself. The vaccine was only for Parvo and distemper. She feels that the other vaccines overload the dogs system unnecessarily.  So I didn't take Bailey right in to the vet when we got home. He had had his second distemper/parvo shot from the breeder two days before we picked him up. But I had misgivings about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines she gave me. If they had not be properly refrigerated any way along the supply chain they could be ineffective.I didn't feel good about not putting Bailey into the care of my excellent vet. 
A few days ago I got an email from a woman who volunteers her dog with Paws'itive Teams, the organization Toby and I volunteered with. She wanted to inform me of the Golden Retriever cancer study and encourage me to enroll Bailey. She is a doctor  and professor of medicine at UCSD. So I took the opportunity to ask her opinion about vaccinations. She told me that vaccinations are safe, and that the illnesses they prevent are nasty. This has always been my thinking. It comes from 45 years as an RN. I saw first hand some very sick children who didn't receive all their immunizations. I remember the polio epidemic of the 50's when many died or were paralyzed. When the polio vaccine was developed everyone rushed to get their children vaccinated and polio was eradicated. I decided to return to the main stream and get Bailey all his shots. I felt a great sense of relief. I believe that people come into our lives at just the time that we need them.
So, yesterday was Bailey's first vet visit. He passed everything with flying colors, right down to his poo. He got his shots like a little trooper. I kept him in his crate while transporting to minimize incidental.exposure to pathogens.
Another piece of advice I got from the breeder is about what to feed my puppy. She told me to feed him Costco puppy chow. She said, the higher quality food is too 'hot' and will make the puppy grow too fast, which is bad for his hips and joints. hoo boy!
So that's what Im feeding him. Im going to research this some more. I want to know who makes Costco dog chow.
Im very interested in feedback from this post!