What is the Distemper Vaccine?

Distemper is an especially terrible infection that can severely harm your pet’s health and quality of live. Distemper is difficult to treat, but with knowledge about the distemper vaccine, you may be able to prevent this terrible disease from hurting your dog.

What is the Distemper Vaccine?

The distemper vaccine is known as the “distemper shot,” and it immunizes a dog from distemper. This vaccine often is combined with other vaccines and is administered in one shot for puppies. The other viruses included in the vaccine are usually leptospirosis, adenovirus 2, parainfluenza, and canine parovirus. Sometimes coronavirus is also included in the vaccine.

When a dog is a little over a month old, veterinarians begin vaccination rounds, which then continue every two to four weeks until the dog is four months old. A year later, the puppy gets a booster shot, and then these puppies have booster shots every one to three years.

The distemper shot contains a modified version of the distemper virus, so that the immune-response builds up without causing the dog to have an illness. Another option for a distemper vaccine is the recombinant virus option, in which portions of the virus are carried on a live harmless virus so that this distemper virus cannot cause illness during vaccination.

Fortunately distemper is not at all common in the United States because of treatment, however if left unvaccinated, dogs can catch the disease through the coughs of other dogs. The virus enters the host through the nose, and then the virus replicates and infects the dog.

The symptoms of the distemper virus range from simple cold system up to serious symptoms such as seizures. The first symptoms to appear include loss of appetite, coughing and pneumonia, fever, and gooey eye and nose mucus and discharge. The next symptoms to appear include diarrhea, vomiting, and callusing of the nose and foot pads. The virus then moves to the central nervous system, so seizures ensue, with tremors and imbalance also occurring. Your dog could potentially die from distemper, or have permanent seizures and other serious symptoms that can last through his life.

If you have a pet that you adopted from a shelter, you might not know whether or not your pet has ever been vaccinated for distemper – or even had the virus. Take your pet to the veterinarian and see what information they can give you about your dog’s state of vaccination.