Feb 2011 / Staff © TheDogPlace /

Inexplicable aggression in Springer Spaniels was attributed to an inherited flaw introduced by an outstanding English import, a dog which no doubt received the full battery of vaccinations, from rabies vaccine to Lyme Disease vaccine, and presumably all at once!

 We now know there may other reasons for such behavioral anomalies.  The entire truth may never be known but we feel it is our duty at TheDogPlace to present concerns about Lyme Disease and Lyme vaccines.  If knowledge can save one dog from being PTS (killed) when in fact, it needs veterinary treatment, we will have done our job.

Lyme Vaccine background. 

Many years ago a pharmaceutical company charged that a competitor had released a vaccine for Lyme Disease before it had ever been diagnosed in the canine.  At that time, Lyme Disease was extremely rare having first been diagnosed in humans in 1975 and not until about 1984 in the dog.

Although owners were frightened by the pharmaceutical hype, Lyme vaccine today is a “non-core vaccine”.  AMVA released the now-famous list of core and non-core vaccines in 2006 when the veterinary associations, red-faced and forced to admit unnecessary, risky vaccines had been widely recommended, finally relented to public exposure. 

A large part of that exposure and pressure was due to Project 2000: Vaccines launched by this site and referenced by dozens of veterinary, medical, and other professional sites.

There appears to be a direct association between Lyme vaccine or Lyme Disease and the unprecedented rise in Dog Bite Statistics (1955 to present) as evidenced in this top reference work in TheDogPress.com   This situation begs for study and input from those who, upon reflection, may have experienced similar situations which their vets did not relate to a recent vaccination. 

Here is an example from Peppertree Rescue and we ask that anyone with a well-documented occurrence contact Peppertree or our Editor.

……… MOJO had continued to do well, extremely well after his treatment for Lyme disease which seemingly eradicated his sudden and serious aggression.  On Saturday, we had an outdoor clinic/book & bake sale and in the beginning he was just fantastic:  our good old happy boy back.  Nothing rattled him, not even some snipping from an older, "grouchy" Golden girl.  He just looked at her and turned away like "Bad manners, ma'm. “I'm a good boy."

During the last hour of the four-hour event, however, his behavior spiraled downhill badly.  The first (and second) episode were inexplicable and frightening.

One of our volunteer's sons (around 10 - 11) had been charmed by him and even asked his parents if they could foster him.  His mom explained that a dog with any aggression in its past can't be fostered or placed in a home with children – but added that it seemed he had really been cured by having the Lyme treated.  Later Garrett was walking with his father, who had Mojo, and all was fine.  Garrett then turned to leave and Mojo launched himself at the boy, growling and clearly intending to do harm.  The father stopped him of course and Garrett turned back to see what the commotion had been about.  Mojo settled down again, tail wagging, 'smiling' at Garrett – the same nice dog he'd been before.  But when Garrett again turned away to go elsewhere, Mojo did it again -- launched himself after him trying to attack and hurt.

We, of course, crated him and assigned someone to stay beside him.  He would seem fine for a while, but on two occasions, as some children were calmly walking nearby, he went "ballistic", growling and trying to jump through the crate to get to them.

One of our volunteers wrote in this morning that she had recently had a chance to discuss this with her vet, who had been to a Lyme conference.

I asked her if she had heard about aggression with Lyme positive dogs and she said yes it means it has started attacking their neurological system and unfortunately she felt there was little hope for them once it got this far.

With a great deal of heartbreak, we have to assume that this is the case with Mojo.  Treatment helped, dramatically, but it didn't totally reverse the damage, apparently.  And it's turned him into a sporadically - unpredictably - dangerous dog.  Heartbreaking.

We've also learned in all of this that Lyme is from the same family as syphilis.  As history students will remember, that too could cause mental derangement and violence, and that too was not reversible.

So -- unhappy, very upsetting conclusion, but  important knowledge still.   I wonder if rescues in areas which have had more Lyme cases for a longer time have seen an increase in inexplicable aggression in dogs they felt pretty sure had good temperament?

Betsy Sommers,  Peppertree Rescue
Albany, NY www.peppertree.org