Quote Originally Posted by binka_nugget
I can't find anyone here who has even heard of nosodes so I think my pup will be vaccinated for distemper and parvo (seperately) then we'll either do titers every year or vaccinations every 3 or so years.. I haven't decided yet. If I decide to vaccinate Kai and Kae again, it won't be for another three or so years. I think I might stop vaccinating Kaedyn completely though since he's getting older.
Mine were vaccinated via the usual puppy schedule. And revaccinated at 2 yrs just to be absolutely sure. In theory the 1 yr revaccination should have been sufficient, but Parvo and Distemper are not diseases to be triffled with. Their next vaccinations will be either at 4 or 5 yrs of age. Most of the research coming out is saying once every 3 yrs, with my local Vets leaning towards once every 2 yrs.

I will not worry about titering them every year. Even if the titer was moderately protective, a once every 3 yrs re-vaccination to provoke an anamnestic response is a much wiser course than taking a chance of even a mild parvo and distemper infection later on. At a interval of up to 4.5 yrs (they didn't give the breakout by years) one study of previously vaccinated dogs found non-protective titers for Parvo (1<80) in 27% of the dogs, and non-protective titers for Distemper (1<32) in 21%. I could not find any studies where such dogs were challenged with a wild strain of Parvo or Distemper to see the results. One might expect depending on age and vaccination interval a range of results if an unprotected dog was infected: A good anamnestic response and no signs of infection, a mild case of the disease, or a full blown case of the disease. There is no way of knowing until such a study is run. Until then a revaccination every 2-3 yrs seems prudent.


The only time one should consider titering before revaccination is if the dog had an allergic reaction to the vaccination previously. In such cases pre-loading with benedryl should avoid the allergic reaction.

As my dogs age, I will tend to go more towards the direction of more frequent instead of less vaccinations. Titers in older or geriatric dogs are more likely to be lower for a given disease agent. Be it dog or human the immune system tends to be more narrow banding as the animal ages.