I have read and double read everything out there as well as having plenty personal experience of many litters of puppies. I would never, ever, trust my dog's health to nosodes having seen unvaccinated puppies die a horrible death through parvo. And many years ago, when it was the custom not to vaccinate and to let your dogs roam where they wanted, I've seen distemper hit my area and the dogs that didn't die or become very sick were the vaccinated ones. I'm sorry if I offend anybody who's a believer in homoeopathy, but until I see some hard evidence that it works any better than a placebo does, I'm not buying it. The only tests done in canine parvo showed the nosode protected dog's mortality rate was identical to the control group given nothing, but the vaccinated dogs had a significantly lower mortality rate.
Here's a link that just about puts it in perspective:
http://www.labbies.com/immun.htm#NosodesI have a friend who was a vet's receptionist and in the last outbreak of Parvo in our area a few years back, two show breeders lost a lot of dogs - one who used nosodes and one who didn't believe in vaccination.
Another friend has bred dogs for over 30 years and she's had one puppy in all that time react to it's initial vaccines. She does the initial course and then the first booster at a year old and that's it - her dogs regularly leave her property to go to shows etc... She used to run a boarding kennel so had people and dogs coming and going constantly. At the time of the aforementioned outbreak, she had one dog boarding who was fully vaccinated (at a notoriously bad vet) who got sick the day after he came in and despite him being rushed to the vet, died of parvo. Her own dogs, including a litter of newborn pekingese puppies, were fine. Nothing is 100% effective or safe and I'm not saying that the current situation re vaccinations is perfect either.
This same friend lost two litters to parvo some years before that due to fostering a pregnant bitch who was a silent carrier. Turns out she hadn't been vaccinated ever in her life. The puppies were all fine when with their mothers, but once they were fully weaned, they got sick and died, I suspect due their dam's antibodies no longer protecting them. The infected bitches puppies died in exactly the same manner. Obviously, mommy had got sick and recovered, so was now well herself, but was still highly infectious to other dogs.
All any of us can do though, is read both sides of the argument and decide what we think is the best for our dogs. The disconcerting thing I found when looking on the internet, is the extreme one sidedness of the information available, but hey, that's a human nature issue and a whole different ball game altogether!
