Nomograph and Puppy Vaccines

Using the Nomograph data in deciding when to vaccinate puppies helps breeders and puppy owners. It takes the guess work and following “this is how I’ve always done it” traditional thinking out of the conversation. Far too many breeders start vaccinating too young and too often. Science has the ability to guide breeders on what does and doesn’t help puppies.

These pictures show the results of mother dog’s titer test for Parvo and Distemper on Nomograph tests. A common result that is shown here: the laboratory suggests the first vaccine of Lou-Lou’s puppies start at 8 weeks and follow up with more vaccines until 18 weeks of age. This is the most typical result of testing. You can see that there are variations of suggestions of vaccines for some of the mothers listed.

Why?

Maternally derived antibody (MDA) interference happens when antibodies passed from the mother block a puppy’s vaccine from working properly. This is a major cause of vaccine failure in young puppies.

Knowing that a litter needs an earlier than 8 weeks vaccine is quite helpful to know. But, it is far more rare to received those results. Since most intentionally bred mother dogs are well vaccinated and usually healthy prior to having puppies, it results in most mother dogs passing on a moderate to strong immunity to their puppies.

Science gives us the ability to know the immunity of a dog by titers testing. As breeders our highest risk disease that we want to avoid in our puppies are Parvo & Distemper.

Doing the Nomograph titers test on a mother dog while pregnant helps breeders know when it is best to vaccinate a litter. The majority of the mothers tested result in puppies needing their first vaccine between 8-12 weeks of age.

Why the range of 8-12 weeks of age for a first or second vaccine?

Science can only predict a window of when the mother’s immunity will wane down enough so the puppy’s own immunity can take over. While the mother’s immunity in the puppy is strong, it blocks the vaccine from working in the puppy.

Results from Lou-Lou’s test:

Some of Lou’s puppies may be able to gain immunity from the 8 week old vaccine. Many of the puppies can gain immunity from the 12 week old vaccine for Distemper.

BUT

The test also stated to continue Parvo vaccines to 4.5 months of age. In this test it shows many of Lou-Lou’s puppies will have a mother given immunity to Parvo for a long time.

Science has come a long way but not far enough. We cannot use science to know an exact day when a puppy is ready for a vaccine. But we can use it to know what window the litter *should* be able to accept the vaccine.

Until a puppy receives a vaccine at the end of the suggested window, we must assume the puppy is not yet fully immune from any earlier vaccine.