Iberia Parish veterinarians will start giving pet owners a choice of whether they want to vaccinate their pets for rabies either every year or every three years.

Several states, including Texas and Mississippi, have gone to the new option. Local vets here are being cautious with the idea, however.

On Wednesday, Iberia Parish rabies coordinator Mike Stockstill will address the Public Health and Safety Committee to suggest amending Chapter 5 of the Compiled Ordinances of Iberia Parish to require that all dogs, cats and ferrets be vaccinated with a series of two vaccinations.

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The first is to be administered at three months of age and the second would be given one year after the initial vaccination, with booster vaccinations being given either one year or three years thereafter as required. Current regulations require vaccinations every 12 months.

Local vets met this month with Stockstill to discuss the matter of when to vaccinate. According to Stockstill, “the group voted to go along with this three-year vaccine, though some were a little apprehensive about it.”

One reason is, rabies — also known as hydrophobia (fear of water) or “canine madness” — is endemic among the skunk population and there has been an upswing in exposure between humans and animals in the past 40 years.

Rabies is an acute viral disease of the nervous system of warm-blooded animals usually transmitted by the bite of a rabid animal. Rabies is fatal if the virus reaches the brain.

The U.S. Public Health Service has published a compendium of approved rabies vaccines nationwide, and over the years — through research and use — the drug companies have developed a three-year vaccine, Stockstill said Monday.

“We’re incorporating this voluntary use of a three-year vaccine into the sanitary code,” Stockstill said, “so this will be an option for vets. They can continue to use the one-year vaccine or three-year vaccine. It’s strictly going to be up to the practicing veterinarian.”

Dr. Roger S. Boughton, of Iberia Animal Clinic, said Monday that when other states tried out the three-year vaccine rabies cases shot upward, but the reason for that was probably lack of compliance by pet owners, not the effectiveness of the vaccine.

“I’m not going to push the three-year vaccine,” Boughton said. “I’ll give my clients the options of what they want to do. This (one-year) program has worked so well I hate to see it change now. But the vaccine does work.”

He said dogs and cats that stay indoors are less prone to the disease.

Another veterinarian, Dr. Chris Dupuy with Dupuy’s Animal Hospital, said he will take each pet “on a case by case basis,” but worries that people will start mixing up the rabies schedule with the yearly “8 in 1” vaccinations.

“I think the studies are there to support the three-year rabies protocol,” Dupuy said Monday, “but I don’t think the studies are there to support other vaccines, like distemper.”

The “8 in 1” for a dogs includes vaccines for canine distemper, adenovirus II, coronavirus, parainfluenza, parvovirus and leptosporisis.

Iberia Parish hasn’t seen rabies for four decades, Dupuy said, “but God forbid we start backing off this (one-year) rabies protocol and rabies shows up.”

In the end, Dupuy will leave it up to the pet owner and will offer advice “if it fits.”

“What I mean by that is, if you have a totally inside dog, that animal would benefit from a three-year rabies vaccination. But an animal that runs the woods, it would be best for the one-year,” he said.