16/12/2025
Why does my pup need so many vaccinations? 🐶
Your pup receives antibodies from their mother’s colostrum (first milk). These antibodies help to protect the pup from disease while their immune system develops, and last between 4 and 16 weeks.
As useful as they are, unfortunately these same antibodies interfere with a pup’s ability to mount an immune response to the same virus from a vaccine.
So the course of vaccines, given every 3-4 weeks from 6-8 weeks of age, is designed to ensure there is no significant gap between losing their mother’s protection and getting vaccine-induced protection.
Parvo and Distemper, particularly, are very serious diseases for young dogs, and can result in death, so it is imperative we do what we can to protect them. Vaccines are a highly effective tool for these viruses and, combined with limiting environmental exposure and careful socialisation for young dogs, has kept the prevalence of these horrible diseases at very low levels in this country 🐾
