Recommended Vaccination and Vet Care Schedule for Dogs and Puppies

Or taking care of your new friend!

*Please check with what your vet recommends-this is only a suggested guideline

Heartworm preventative and disease- Yearly medication for preventative of heart worm preferred. Please consult your vet. Puppies should be started at 4 months of age and continue for their entire life. All adopters are required by the UDR contract to ensure their adopted pets are on Heart Worm Preventative, purchased through a licensed Veterinarian. Heart worm is transmitted by the mosquito and is NOT an intestinal parasite but a parasite that infects the heart muscle. Once infected your dog will die if not treated for this deadly parasite that infects the heart muscle. For more info on Heart Worm disease go here https://www.heartwormsociety.org/

Vaccination Titer Waivers for older dogs-Getting your adult dog, older then 3 years of age, vaccinated may be controversial. Please consult your vet. Some believe adult pets are over-vaccinated which can potentially pose health risks. You may consider other health preventatives with a licensed Veterinarian to guide your decisions. Your adult dog may not need annual vaccinations  if you instead have titer tests — tests that check a dog’s immunity levels for vaccinations such as DHPP — to determine exactly which vaccinations are really needed. One exception is the rabies vaccine, which is regulated by law and may be required every one to three years, depending on what state you live in and the type of rabies vaccine the vet uses.

Flea and Tick Preventative-  We highly encourage all adopters to use flea and tick control in the spring and summer months. Ticks carry many illness's that can be deadly to your pet. We do recommend Frontline Plus, but please consult your vet for recommendations.  

Please check out the American Veterinarian Medical Association on responsible pet ownership and further recommendations on pet care for your new friend. https://www.avma.org/public/PetCare/Pages/responsible-pet-ownership.aspx

Obedience Training and Formal classes- Training is a lifetime event for your new pet!!!

• Formal Training Classes provide the opportunity for getting your new family member started off right. WE DO NOT RECOMMEND TRAINING YOUR DOG YOURSELF in the beginning!
• For puppies- Puppy classes provide much needed experiences and opportunities for your puppy to develop interaction skills with other puppies, with people, and in new environments. Puppy socialization has been found to be critical to the psychological health of adult dogs. Expose them to as many different things, sounds, people, and animals from their imprint age of 4 weeks to 6 months, and continue for their entire life if you desire to have a well balanced adult dog! Puppy classes provide the opportunity for this important beginning facet of your puppy’s upbringing. 
• Puppies who are not exposed, not socialized and tend to live a sheltered life in their homes, can potentially end up with behavior issues, fears, or anxieties as adults. Often these are the adult dogs who end up in shelters as no one took the time as puppies, to help them become well rounded dogs!! Consider signing up your new puppy for doggy daycare or puppy socializing classes as soon as you bring them home! Expose them to everything possible! Take them for car rides, do sleep overs at friends houses, play with neighbor puppies and children if available.
• Formal Training classes provide dog owners the skills and knowledge for dealing with common, normal dog behaviors—starting with puppy behaviors such as house training and chewing. Trainers can provide advice for issues that may arise after you bring you dog home and over the course of the first few months. 
• No matter what age you start training your dog, foundation training provides the basis for any activity, behavior or job you want your dog to do and provides dogs with the basic good manners we all want in our homes—from polite greeting when guests arrive, to walking nicely on the leash, to coming when called. This is not instinctive behavior but learned. If you want a well adjusted adult dog you need to invest in your dog! A trained dog is a fully participating member of the family which you can then be proud of!
• We can NOT stress the importance of FORMAL Training and want all our adoptive dogs to have this opportunity in their new homes.
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Keep us updated!!!-Please keep us posted as to how your newly adopted pet is fitting in the home. Send photos and updates to dobermanrescue@hotmail.com. We would love to see our adopted dogs at events we will be hosting in the future. This is a great opportunity to give your new friend some very much needed social time with others, and give us a chance to see them again.

United by Love

Thank you for being their hero by choosing to adopt!