05/30/2026
Discounted rabies vaccines will be available next Saturday throughout Morgan County, helping pet owners meet the state law requiring all cats and dogs three months of age or older to be vaccinated against the deadly disease.
“It doesn’t concern you as much until … you have a dog that was positive and everybody has to have shots because that dog didn’t have vaccinations,” said owner of Osborne Animal Clinic and Morgan County Rabies Inspector Dr. Steve Osborne. “It’s easy to be complacent about it until you have a problem, and then it’s too late.”
Next Saturday, the annual Morgan County Rabies Clinic will take place. Veterinarians will go out into the county to inoculate animals against rabies at a discounted rate.
“The (rabies) clinic is just a way to make it easier for people to be compliant,” Osborne said. “It’s a thing that communities have been doing since the 1940s — back when rabies was much more common — to try to build a barrier between wildlife and humans.”
Osborne said any mammal can get rabies and transmit it, and most of the animals that contract rabies are wild animals. In Alabama, the most common wild animals to carry the disease are bats, skunks, raccoons and foxes. He said cows are the most common animal to transfer rabies to humans.
“You probably don’t go to the woods that often, but if you’ve got a dog, he may,” Osborne said. “If there’s a raccoon hiding behind your house 100 yards away or whatever, you may not see it, but your dog is going to go over there and see it. They need to be vaccinated so they don’t get it, come back from the woods, and transmit it to us.”
There are two types of rabies, Osborne said, “furious” and “dumb.”
“The animals act different than normal,” he said. “So, in wild animals, they act calm and friendly, which, as you can imagine, leads to exposures for people that are not thinking. In other animals that may be domesticated, they act wild and crazy, which also enhances their ability to transmit to humans.”
Alicia Carpenter lives in unincorporated Lawrence County on a large farm. Because of this, she said she always stays up to date on her one cat’s and three dogs’ rabies vaccinations. Carpenter said she had a Boston terrier named Shaggy who died in February.
“Shaggy was 100% fearless,” she said. “One night he got into a bad scrap with a raccoon, and it almost killed him. I cleaned up his wounds externally, and then he took doxycycline to make sure everything healed up alright. But he would have definitely gotten rabies from the way those injuries were (had he not been vaccinated). It was apparent that the raccoon had taken his hands and tried to pull (Shaggy’s) ears off. They never stood up again after that.
“But he lived another three years.”
Carpenter said getting your animals vaccinated for rabies is simple and inexpensive.
“It’s so cheap; it’s not like it’s expensive,” she said. “Everybody dreads going to the vet because you think, ‘Oh, I’m not going to walk out of there without spending at least $150.’ But that’s not true. You just say, ‘I want a rabies shot.’ They’ll give you a rabies shot. … You don’t have to have an exam or anything to get a rabies shot.
“All veterinarians want to make sure your animal is vaccinated.”
Special thanks to The Decatur Daily for this educational article.
