If you live in an area where heartworms are prevalent, then yearly testing is really important. Having bloodwork done every once in a while is good so that if your dog is ever sick, the vet has a baseline for what is normal for your dog. Having the complete set of normal puppy shots is very important, and boostering at 1 year is important, but after that, you don’t have to have them repeated if you don’t want to. I do not do Bordetella at all. It’s like the common cold or maybe the flu. There are a huge number of different strains and the vaccine doesn’t cover all of them. Immune compromised dogs are the only ones that ever have issues with getting a bad case of Bordetella and the vaccine doesn’t work well on immune compromised dogs. The Lepto vaccine is only good for a few strains of Lepto and will not help if the Lepto strains common to your area are not the one covered by the vaccine. If your vet can tell you that the serovars in your area really are the ones covered by the vaccine, that is the only case where I would get that one.
5 months ago
