Lyme Vaccine

[Rae]

OK all you Hunters out there. I need advice!

Grace our Llewellyn Setter age 7 months is our upland hunter. Have any of you heard of the Lyme disease vaccine?

Grace went hunting last weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Rick my hubby just found a tick on her thursday evening. I had no clue Ticks were out in Winter but we have had warm sunny days in the last month. So I did not use the Frontline...... We took her to the Vet on Friday morning. It was slightly infected and a deer tick and she had a fever. They removed it and gave her 3 weeks worth of Doxicycline antibiotic. In 3 weeks they want to give her the Vaccine and I have read about side effects.

Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks Rae

[georgie]

Our lab who passed did get the Lyme vaccine. Alot of people in our lab club do get their dogs the Lyme vaccine and they have not had any problems. We chose with our last three not to get it. Our vet does not routinely give the vaccine. She will only give it if you ask for it. We hunt & run hunt tests with our labs and we use Frontline Plus. We also have them tested twice a year for Lyme disease.

If they have been given the vaccine they will test positive, just because they have had the vaccine & have built antibodies. Our vet quit giving it because of side effects but never really got into what the side effects were.

Our breeder's lab did develop Lyme disease & with antibiotics it did clear up and she caught it early. I do not know if it was a coincidence or not but our old lab died at 9 1/2 from leukemia. I do wonder if somehow it was connected to that vaccine, probably not, but I still wonder. At least for us, I would rather use the topical Frontline & do the testing. We always do tick checks after they have been out in the field.

[GulfCoast]

We give Advantage Multi (or straight ivomectin) and just test periodically. We also check for fleas after training/hunting.

[Rae]

Ok Thanks We did check her after hunting but did not find it. Besides we really were not looking because we did not think they were out yet.

[georgie]

Living in Pennsylvania, we did not used to use the Frontline year round. But this year we have had some crazy weather & it warmed up a few days & we found a tick on Abby. We now are using it almost year round. Someone told my husband that the ticks will come out if the temp is above 32 degrees. We had temps of 5 degrees then it went to 50 degrees. I hate that in the winter. We have three black labs & the deer ticks are so tiny...very hard to see on them. I got a tick comb we use.

[Nallah06]

Nallah has had the Lyme Vaccine....Morgan & Remi I opted not to give it to them.

Nallah has gotten Lyme & Anaplasmosis even with the vaccine & frontline application. So its not 100% guaranteed. Morgan has also gotten Lyme & Anaplasmosis but she was not vaccinated.

I'm going the limited vaccine route and trying to control fleas & ticks as natually as I can. We test them every year for the disease & obviously if they show any signs we bring them in for testing early. In both cases, neither of them showed signs or symptoms.