Why pet owners decline vaccines: Survey insights and strategies for navigating hesitancy

Vaccine hesitancy isn't just a human medicine problem. At the 2026 Fetch National Harbor Veterinary Conference in Maryland, Jessica Pritchard, VMD, MS, DACVIM (SAIM), walked attendees through what her research reveals about pet owners who decline vaccines—and the practical, evidence-based ways clinical teams can move them toward yes.

Where the research started

Pritchard's research grew out of a pattern her team kept seeing: dogs who survived leptospirosis, sometimes after hospitalization and long recoveries, whose owners still declined the vaccine that could prevent it.

Working from home in 2021, combing through medical records amid COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, she and her collaborators began to wonder how much overlap existed between owners hesitant about vaccines for themselves and those hesitant about vaccines for their pets.

"We [were] seeing some folks who [were] electing not to get this vaccine, and at the same time, we [were] doing leptospirosis research and seeing folks electing not to give [their pets that] vaccine despite being very familiar with the disease. And so, why does that happen?" Pritchard told attendees.

“This problem, unfortunately, has not gone away,” she continued.

Because veterinary teams have frequent, trusted contact with clients, what a team says about a leptospirosis vaccine may shape how that client thinks about vaccines for their children or themselves, Pritchard noted.

What vaccine hesitancy actually is

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) define vaccine hesitancy as a “delay in acceptance or a refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination services.” Vaccine hesitancy, Pritchard explained, is also a motivational state of being conflicted about or opposed to vaccinating. Owners fall along a continuum, and it can differ for each vaccine. The clients worth focusing on, Pritchard said, are the ones in the middle who accept with lingering doubts or decline but remain unsure. Owners who refuse everything generally do not visit clinics for wellness appointments offering vaccine services, making these clients more difficult to have a thorough discussion with.

"Those who are in the middle are the ones where we can really make inroads, and that's the best place to focus our efforts,” Pritchard said.

Findings from a survey asking Wisconsin pet owners why they decline vaccines

To learn why owners actually decline, Pritchard's team adapted the SAGE vaccine hesitancy scale for dogs and surveyed clients during wellness appointments across Wisconsin in the summer of 2022. Veterinary student researchers administered the survey in the exam room. They collected 333 responses.

Conducting the survey in Wisconsin was a deliberate choice, as the state has high rates of Lyme disease and leptospirosis, making it difficult to argue against pets facing no risk of infection, Pritchard shared. The demographic was skewed white, wealthy, and college-educated, but these were the clients already coming through the door, Pritchard said.

The key findings:

• The most common reason owners declined a vaccine was that they didn't think it was medically necessary, followed by concern about side effects and cost.
• More than half of owners who declined leptospirosis or Lyme vaccines simply didn't believe their pet was at risk.
• Human vaccine hesitancy correlated strongly with canine vaccine hesitancy.
• Owners reported trusting their veterinarian's vaccine advice more than their own health care provider's.

That last point is an opportunity, Pritchard said. A clear, direct recommendation carries weight, so telling an owner their dog should get a vaccine lands differently than just mentioning one exists.

Techniques that work

Because owners' biggest barrier was misjudging their pet's risk, Pritchard emphasized reframing the conversation around real, local disease. Many of her recommended techniques come from the American Academy of Pediatrics' guidance for talking with parents:

• Truth-sandwich messaging. The brain remembers what it hears first and most often, so lead with the truth, address the myth briefly in the middle, then close with the truth again.
• Presumptive over participatory framing. "Fluffy is due for two vaccines today—what questions do you have?" lands differently than "Would you like to hear about the vaccines Fluffy could get?" The first assumes vaccination is the plan.
• Decision aids and icon arrays. Visual tools help owners grasp risk. One human study showed that displaying a single red dot among a million dots kept hesitancy from rising when people learned of a one-in-a-million risk.
• Motivational interviewing. For firmly hesitant owners, this slower approach—expressing empathy, reflective listening, advising only with permission—aims not to win full agreement in one visit but to move the owner one step closer.

“Every time we have this conversation, we're hopefully moving one step closer toward a yes eventually for this vaccine, and that will be helpful for that pet,” Pritchard emphasized.

The takeaway

No vaccine and no vaccinator is 100% effective, Pritchard said, and a vaccine can't prevent the disease if the pet never receives the vaccine. Knowing that most refusals stem from a belief that the pet isn't at risk rather than outright opposition makes the conversation far more manageable. Teams can address hesitancy with local disease stories, honest talk about adverse effects and newer data on reducing reaction risk, and a confident recommendation.

Pritchard credited her collaborators at the University of Tennessee, the participating clinics, the student researchers, and the funding that supported the work. Her team is now running a national survey on cat owners and studying vaccine hesitancy within veterinary healthcare teams themselves.

Reference

Pritchard J. Moving the Needle: Addressing Vaccine Hesitant Pet Owners. Presented at: 2026 Fetch National Harbor; September 19, 2026; National Harbor, MD.