Quote:
Originally Posted by Britster  
So Jackson had his puppy vaccines as well (I think it was like 8, 12, 16 weeks or something similar). His 12 week vaccine he had a *horrible* reaction to the lepto vaccine so never again can we do that. Then at one year old he had his pup vaccines boostered (and rabies).
We did titers when he was... 6.5yrs old. So it had been over 5 years since his last vaccine. The distemper titer did come back on the lower side but he was still considered adequately protected. We opted to give another distemper vaccine just in case. I likely won't vaccinate for anything else but rabies every 3 years per the law for the remainder of his life.
Honestly, the titers were probably pointless. But sometimes they are considered "proof of vaccination" and I preferred to just.... have them. I paid $60. So w/e lol. Titers are not really being used properly. Like a low titer doesn't always mean they're NOT protected and vice versa. Correct me someone if I'm wrong but I'm pretty certain you could literally give the dog their vaccines and then the next day do a titer test and it would show what their immunity levels are and it may show up low, even though they JUST had the vaccine. Someone can explain it better than I can.  |
No, you have it correct here!
You can have a positive titer, but no cellular immunity; or a negative titer, but have cellular immunity.
So, yup, the titers are almost useless - EXCEPT for exactly what you described, Brit: if there is a reason you want to confirm there may have been a previous vaccination (again, within the context of understanding what the results do/don't mean).
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