Your puppy leaves us with its age-appropriate vaccinations already done and a signed, dated record so your own vet can pick up exactly where we left off. This is what that record means and what happens next.
One thing before the table: this is what we do and what the veterinary guidance says in general. It is not veterinary advice for your dog. Your vet knows your dog, your area, and what is actually circulating locally, and where they disagree with anything here, they are right and I am not.
The usual timetable
Six to eight weeks
The first combination vaccination. This is the one we give before a puppy goes home, and it is the point at which the protection a puppy inherited from its mother’s milk starts to fade. That handover is the whole reason the schedule looks the way it does.
Ten to twelve weeks
The second dose. This one is yours to arrange, usually two to four weeks after the first, and it is the appointment people most often let slip because the puppy seems perfectly well. It is not optional. A single dose is not a course.
Fourteen to sixteen weeks
The third dose, and the one that actually completes the course. Immunity is not reliable until roughly a week or two after this one. Rabies is usually given somewhere around here too, depending on where you live and what the law requires.
Twelve to sixteen months
A booster, then boosters at the interval your vet recommends. Modern guidance has moved toward longer gaps between core boosters than it used to be, so ask rather than assume it is annual.
The mistake almost everyone makes
There is a window, roughly eight to sixteen weeks, where a puppy is not fully covered but is also in the middle of the only socialisation period it will ever get. People are told to keep the puppy away from everything until the course is finished, they do exactly that, and at four months they have a healthy puppy that is frightened of the world.
That trade is real and it does not resolve itself. The behavioural risk of an under-socialised dog is, on the numbers, a far more common cause of dogs being given up than infectious disease is. What the guidance actually recommends is not isolation, it is careful exposure:
- Carry the puppy. Streets, shops, traffic, the school gate at pick-up time. All the noise and none of the ground.
- Visit friends who have healthy, fully vaccinated, sensible adult dogs. A known dog in a known house is a very different proposition from a public park.
- Have people come to you. Different ages, hats, beards, umbrellas, walking sticks, wheelchairs, deep voices.
- Use your own garden and your own car. Surfaces, smells, the sound of the engine.
- Avoid public parks, pavements where unknown dogs relieve themselves, and anywhere dogs of unknown status gather, until the course is done.
That is the balance. Not a bubble, and not the dog park at ten weeks.
Worming
Your puppy has been wormed on schedule from its first weeks and the dates are on the record. Puppies generally continue on a regular worming programme through the first months, then move to whatever interval your vet advises. It is unglamorous and it matters.
What to take to the first appointment
- The vaccination and worming record we gave you, which is signed and dated.
- The microchip paperwork, so your vet can confirm the details and you can check the registration is in your name.
- A list of your questions. You will forget them otherwise. Everyone does.
- Something the puppy likes to eat, so the first visit to a vet is a place where good things happen rather than a place where it gets held still by a stranger.
That last one is worth more than it sounds. A dog that is relaxed at the vet is easier to treat for twelve years, and the habit is set at the first two or three visits.