Leptospira vaccine
 

Oscar gets his 2nd shot tomorrow. Does he or does he not get a leptospira this young? I think I remember my breeder saying wait til 6 months. What do you guys do? I posted this in a couple of other threads but did not get any response on it...Thanks in advance for any help with this.

Unless Lepto is a problem in your area, a lot of yorkie breeders will not allow it to be given to their dogs because of some of the side effects that have been experienced in toy dogs.

I will certainly ask the vet tomorrow before we get a shot. I just read on a site where a lot of vets don't like to give it at all to a dog under 10 pounds. It can carry serious side effects all of which we want to avoid...thanks for your help! This is what I read about the shot:

Considerations for Toy Breeds

It does appear that toy breeds may have more adverse reactions to vaccines, so a less-frequent vaccination schedule may be of
particular benefit to this group. The most frightening response
is severe anaphylaxis, most common after killed bacterial
vaccines such as leptospirosis. There are some vets who will not
give a leptospirosis vaccine to a dog under ten pounds for this
reason. The one milliliter dose volume listed on most vaccine
labels is recommended because that was the volume tested during the licensing process. During the efficacy testing, the issue of breed was ignored. Consequently, we really don't have studies to tell us if the Toy Poodle should get the same volume as the Great Dane. Although a natural inclination would be to halve the dose for toy breeds, there is little or no scientific data to back up that recommendation. Human studies, though, advise against
decreasing dosage on the basis of size. In a study of premature
babies given half of a DTP vaccination, those babies did not
appear to develop an adequate immune response to Pertussis.
(9) A common compromise used by breeders is to halve the dose
of the vaccination during the initial puppy series, giving a full dose after 16 weeks. Leptospirosis is usually omitted until after a year of age, or omitted entirely, unless there is local concern about the disease. This may change after the performance of the new vaccine is evaluated.

Yes, I do not have the lepto put into the shots my dogs get, but there is no problem in the area (Indiana) that I live with Lepto either.