[Mike_and_Me]

Thanks to YT last year I read about titer testing, which lead me to read articles from Dr. Dodds and Dr. Schultz's work on this topic. Where we live it's not popular yet and most of vets vaccinate with 5in1 or 7in1 combo vaccines year after year and give rabies vax at a very young age and a lot of times give multiple vaccines at once. After our negative experience with puppy shots I was so lucky to have found a new vet who does things differently. We did rabies vaccine at 6 months old. Then this year we did titer testing for distemper and parvo instead of a booster. Mike has very high immunity against parvo and high immunity against distemper. Vet said that distemper might be showing lower cause dogs don't get in contact with the virus often like parvo so the antibodies might show as high while it's actually very high. For we are ok for min. 3 years, then we re-test and see if he needs a booster. That made me very happy.

We also just did titer testing for rabies antibody to get an international traveling certificate from government which is now required in most countries for traveling. But the certificate is valid for lifetime ONLY if you continue with yearly vaccinations(( Mike's titer came back three times higher than the "norm". Vet says immunity is ok for min. 7 years and possibly for a lifetime but unfortunately titer results are not accepted in lieu of vaccine so the yearly rabies must be given. And 3 year vaccine has not been yet approved here.

I'm quite frustrated the combo yearly vaccinations are still being pushed, that titer testing costs 5 to 10 times more than the vaccine and titer results are not accepted in place of vaccination.

Would love to hear what kind of protocols do you follow to vaccinate your furkids? Do you do titer testing? Do you do rabies yearly or once in 3 years?