Here Is Some General Information About Vaccines You Should Know:

How Long Will It Be Before My Pet Is Protected?

It takes a full 14 days after vaccination before your can trust your pet to be fully protected. The vaccine itself does not protect your pet. Your pet must make antibodies of it's own. That is why vaccination just before boarding or exposure is a waste of time.

Does The Quality of Vaccines Differ?

Yes, products sold in feed stores tend to be of lower quality. When they are respected National brands that have been diverted from veterinarians, they have often not been shipped or stored right.

Do We Give Our Pets Too Many Vaccines?

Yes, just like children, puppies need vaccination at the proper time or they will get ill. But yearly vaccination for many disease is entirely too often. Please read an article on the subject regarding cats. The same facts about over-vaccination apply to dogs. We are just luck that dogs don't get the number of vaccination tumors that cats do.

The exceptions are vaccine against Leptospirosis, which seem to only last a year and vaccination against kennel cough which last six months to a year. In some situations, you may decide your pet's life style requires these vaccinations yearly. However, injecting these foreign-protein containing products into your pet is not without risk. Sometimes the risks out weight the possible benefits. Kennel cough is not a fatal disease. Leptospirosis usually requires exposure to stagnant standing water or rats.

Some owners give their pets Lyme disease vaccine every year. Pets get the disease from ticks. If you are very fearful of catching it from your pet, that is a valid option. But my suggestion is that before you decide, see if there is actually a high incidence of Lyme disease where you live. The areas in heavy red and black are the areas where pets are most likely to be exposed. We know that Lyme vaccine has the potential of causing adverse effects including generalized arthritis, allergy and other immune diseases.

Another commonly administered vaccine is for Kennel Cough (Bordetella,etc.). This is usually a mild and transient disease contracted during boarding, grooming or dog shows. Most pets do not live in breeding kennels, are not boarded, do not go to dog shows and have only occasional contact with dogs outside their immediate family. Also, the immunity this vaccine imparts is short-lived. I recommend it only when owners anticipate likely exposure. I am more concerned about toy breeds in which coughing can persist quite some time due to the narrow tracheas common in these breeds. I do give this vaccine a bit more frequently to toy breeds that have a history of narrow trachea (windpipe) because these pets cough so long when they catch kennel cough. They also spend lots of time at the groomer and kennels where kennel cough disease lurks.

What Are Adjuvants ?

Adjuvants are compounds that are added to vaccines in an attempt to increase their effectiveness. I no longer use vaccines with them because they cause so many side effects. At least one company, Intervet , offers a non-adjuvanted 3-year vaccines. This is the vaccine that I use in dogs. It contains none of the adjuvants that might cause cancer or immunological disease later in life. An even better choice might be Heska's intranasal vaccines which require no injection. Merial's Purevax products use recombinant canarypox vector vaccine technology which may also lessen these problems. It is too soon to tell. I suggest your pet receive a rabies vaccine that also contains no adjuvants. But even non-adjuvanted injectable vaccines are not risk-free. If your dog has had prior vaccine reactions, think seriously before having any vaccines administered.

When Should My Puppy Get It's Shots?

When it comes to puppies most veterinarians are in agreement. Puppies should receive their Canine Distemper, Canine Adenovirus, Canine Parvovirus at 7-9 weeks of age, 12-13 weeks of age, and finally at 16-18 weeks of age to insure they are well protected against these diseases. Shots given earlier than 9-12 weeks usually do not work. This is because antibody from the puppy's mother is usually still in their bodies. But rarely there is not enough of it. Those puppies can catch these disease. So rather than take that risk, we give them all an early vaccination. An alternative is to have the puppy's antibody level checked instead. But that procedure is more expensive and time consuming than just giving the vaccine.

I generally give the intranasal kennel cough ( bordatella) vaccine at 12 and 18 weeks of age. At 12-16 weeks of age I give puppies a killed three-year rated rabies virus vaccination (Merial's Emrab-3).

Veterinarians differ on when they give these vaccinations. But my schedule has worked well for me.

What Vaccinations Should My Adult Pet Get?

With the exceptions I have mentioned (Kennel Cough, Leptospirosis, Lyme) adult dogs do not need to be vaccinated more than every three years.

Rabies is a special cases.The problem are state laws that mandate yearly rabies vaccination. You need to obey those laws for the benefit of the human and dog-population of your State as a whole. If States allowed exceptions, rabies could get out of control. Several rabies vaccines are federally certified for three years of protection (Imrab) . However, many states disregard these federal guidelines and require yearly vaccination. When yearly rabies vaccination is mandated, I prefer thiomersol-free, non-adjuvanted vaccine.

Until recently, veterinarians simply gave all dogs booster shots every year. This is what the vaccine manufacturers suggested. Besides, it brought our clientele back to our animal hospitals yearly, which increased our income and gave us the opportunity to detect problems early before the owners were aware of them. Most veterinarians do a thorough physical examination on pets at the time of their yearly vaccinations and we often detect problems during the exam. Also, by law, most states require a yearly rabies vaccination even though studies have shown that many of the rabies vaccines we use give us three years of protection.

Many veterinarians, myself included, were suspicious that the vaccines we used were giving much longer periods of protection than one year. We knew this because we never saw distemper, hepatitis or parvovirus disease in dogs that had been vaccinated - even many years earlier.

Part of the problem involved the typical fee structures of veterinary practices. We tended to undercharge for complex surgery and subsidize those procedures with the money we earn on yearly vaccinations. I do not know how this practice came about, but it has existed at least since the 1950’s. There was also an incentive for vaccine manufacturers to sell more vaccine if boosters were recommended annually. There was also a one-year mind set among the staff the USDA and FDA. It has been taken to the extreme, to the point where there is now a two-year expiration date on a vial of water.

There are many risks associated with too frequent vaccinations. For one, the immune system of your pet is stressed by these vaccinations. Occasional dogs develop allergic reactions, facial swelling, stomach and intestinal upsets, mopiness, fevers, itching, nausea and coughing after they receive a shot. But we also suspect that vaccinations trigger certain autoimmune diseases such as Addison’s disease in dogs.

Occasionally these reactions are life threatening. Vaccines contain many ingredients besides the dried virus. Some of these, antibiotics and adjuvants (enhancers) are implicated in vaccine reactions. If I am suspicious that a dog might have a reaction to a particular vaccine, I pre-administer antihistamines (Benadryl) and give a minute test dose of 0.05ml. If the dog is normal thirty minutes after the test dose, I give it the remaining one-milliliter. However, even the test dose may cause reactions in some animals.

High-risk dogs

High-risk dogs are dogs that roam or take unsupervised strolls; dogs that play with other dogs that are not from their household, dogs that have contact with wild animals, or swim and drink from pools puddles and streams. Other high-risk dogs are coprophagic (eat stool). Some are more at risk because they attend dog shows, field trials and other activities that expose them to greater stress and disease than most pets. For these dogs, you and your veterinarian need to work out an individual vaccination plan or better yet, have the pet's antibody levels checked yearly.