Malli wrote: I love it when you come in with all your information and knowledge!
hahaha! I try to help when I can, but you do a great job yourself!
maberi wrote:
Great info Blabs. It's nice to see that vets are not putting out cookie cutter vaccination schedules for all dogs, and the dog's health and lifestyle are taken into account.
Do you see many patients running titers after all of the puppy vaccines and boosters to ensure the dog has an adequate immune response? Do you see many cases where the vaccine is immunogenic or where a dog is non responsive?
I do not see a lot of people that are doing titers after the initial puppy set. I often see people doing the 1 year old series, and then doing titers the following year. I do think that more people would do vaccine titers if they weren't cost prohibitive for a lot of people.
Only certain titers exist, however. And there are some vaccines that will simply NOT last even the year that we hope they will.
I would say in most cases, the dog eventually becomes "unprotected" and we end up boostering the vaccine. I've had to do that many times. I also had a case where the dog got vaccines up until 3 years of age and the titers continued to be protective until the dog passed away at 15 (which I do want to say is
incredibly uncommon).
This actually happened to me, and one of my Chihuahua's (hooeys), Goolosh
. He was a rescue, and had not had any vaccines (or anything else for that matter
) until I rescued him at one year of age. In our case, I gave him two 4-way Distemper combo shots (no lepto), separated by 4 weeks when I first adopted him. I gave him another 4-way when he turned 2 without running a titer. I then titered him for Distemper and Parvo at age 3, and it was "protective". So I didn't give a vaccine. I then ran a titer at his 4 year mark, and his Parvo titer is still ok, but the Distemper one is considered "unprotective" and I will be boostering it in a few weeks (I often separate vaccines). I have his littermate, Penelope, but adopted her a few months earlier. She had the same vaccines, same maker of the vaccines, same timing of the vaccines, and exact same exposure, nutrition, etc since adoption. All things are essentially equal, and her titers are all ok at the 4 year mark.
It really goes to show you that every dog is going to have it's own unique set of requirements for their vaccine schedule. This is also
part of the reason why you don't see too many vaccine companies labeling their vaccines for a long duration of immunity. Why one dog has a 10 year duration and another not even 2year duration of immunity? So many factors play into that, but it will be the vaccine company that is ultimately responsible if the vaccine fails. That is a risk that they aren't willing to take....yet.