About Shots

About Shots
This paper is not intended to be a treatise on vaccination methods, but rather a primer on the reasoning behind the three-shot sequence that most veterinarians advocate. An understanding of the meaning of passive immunity (from the dam's milk) is important along with some other information as well. This is written because I have encountered people who wait great long intervals between shots, or who do not think the third shot is necessary, or who simply do not know to even begin the series of shots, or to contact their veterinarian after they receive a new puppy or adult Siberian. The statistics will, I hope, explain why this third shot is usually given between the 12th and the 14th week.

When the puppy is weaned, it retains immunity transmitted from its dams milk for 7-10days. In the majority of puppies, by the 10th day the immunity has diminished to the point where a shot is needed and can be effective. The shot itself is a modified (weakened) form of the disease virus, which is intended to make the puppy respond by producing antibodies (immunity) within the cells in its system which are adapted for this function.

There are two major criteria which must be fulfilled for a vaccination to be effective:
1)- the antibodies from the dam must be gone, since they will attach the modified virus and prevent it from eliciting the natural response from the puppy; and
2)- the puppy must be immunologically competent, that is, it must be able to produce its own antibody. In the great majority of puppies, this competence comes on somewhere within the first few months, but it is different with each puppy.

Thus, the first shot is given about 10 days after weaning, and the second and third shots (and protective measures against exposure to distemper, hepatitis, and leptospirosis) are important until the end of the series. With each shot, the puppy has a greater chance of being protected by its own immune response to that shot. But if he is one of the few whose immunological system doesn't "get going" until he is 12 weeks old, two shots (at 6 ½ and 9 weeks, for instance)do him no good at all! The shot itself, in the case of the kind most widely accepted, the modified live virus, gives him no protection in and of itself; he has to respond to it by making his own antibodies. Additionally, it has been shown that the first shot, for some reason, wipes out whatever residual maternal immunity he may have left; thus, if he does not respond, he is actually most vulnerable after this first shot and before the second, when again he has a chance to respond immunologically.

I am not here discussing gamma globulin, or "measels" shots, which are actually injections of antibody which require no response from the puppy because they are the antibody. My veterinarian has little faith in these, and recommends the above three shots given in series, and protection/isolation from exposure.

Fredric R. Cornell, M.I.S.
ARTYK Siberians