I took Katie for her annual checkup last weekend, and I chose not to immunize or titer her, with the exception of rabies. She had all of her puppy shots and her one year booster. When it came time to immunize her at the age of four, I asked about titers instead. My vet preferred that to vaccines for her. I titered the next year, as well. Last year, at the age of six, I asked my vet if he thought it was safer to vaccinate Katie one more time to be safe. He told me he felt it was safer for her not to vaccinate. He checked her titer levels from the two previous years, and he told me he did not think we needed to titer her either. He told me the same last week. He said that, in the nineteen years that he has been in practice, he has not seen a case of parvo or distemper in a dog that was properly immunized as a puppy ( with first year booster). He said he was comfortable with not tittering her..If he recommended it, I would have done so, but he didn't feel it was necessary. I have been with this vet for the nineteen years he has been in practice (with the exception of the two years I didn't have a dog). I trust him implicitly, and I have always felt he has acted on my dogs' best interests. I still research and ask lots of questions.
None of my Yorkies have ever had vaccines for Lepto or any other core vaccines. My vet does not like the Lyme vaccine, even though his practice is in heavy Lyme country. I must disclose that my vet combines Eastern and Western medicine. His wife, also a veterinarian, was trained at Cornell, but he was trained in Beijing, so he specializes in Chinese herbal remedies along with conventional medicine. My dear friend lost her Coton de Tulear this past fall from an immune mediated disease which can be caused by vaccinosis. All white dogs are more susceptible to this, but even her vet suspects that the vaccines could have been the cause. Her dogs also had yearly Lyme shots in addition to the boosters every three years and rabies. |