Puppy vaccination schedule: a first-year guide
Which shots your puppy needs and when, from 6 weeks to one year.
A puppy's first year decides how well protected it is for the rest of its life, and the reason vaccination is a course rather than a single injection comes down to one thing: its mother's antibodies.
A newborn puppy gets antibodies from the first milk, colostrum, in the hours after birth. Those maternal antibodies protect it early on, but they also block vaccines — the vaccine is neutralised before the puppy's own immune system can respond to it. They fade at an unpredictable rate, somewhere between roughly six and sixteen weeks depending on the individual and how much the mother had. Nobody can look at a puppy and say which week its window opens. That is why the course is a series spaced a few weeks apart: it guarantees that at least one dose lands after the maternal antibodies have gone and before the puppy is exposed. A single injection is a gamble on timing.
## The rough shape of the schedule
Exact protocols vary with the vaccine brand, the local disease picture and the individual puppy, so treat this as the pattern rather than a prescription — your vet sets the dates.
The first vaccination usually happens around six to eight weeks, covering the core diseases: distemper, parvovirus, adenovirus and parainfluenza. A second dose follows about three to four weeks later, and a third at around twelve to sixteen weeks. Rabies is given from twelve weeks in most protocols, and in Georgia it is both a legal requirement and the vaccine you will need documented for travel. The final dose of the puppy course matters most, because it is the one most likely to fall after the maternal antibodies have cleared — skipping it because “he's had two already” is the most common way a course fails.
After that, a booster at around one year old, then boosters on the schedule your vet recommends. Non-core vaccines — leptospirosis, kennel cough — depend on where the dog lives, whether it boards, meets many other dogs or swims in standing water. Ask, rather than assuming they are all necessary or all unnecessary.
Deworming runs alongside vaccination, not instead of it. Puppies are typically wormed from two weeks and repeatedly through the early months, and a puppy carrying a heavy worm burden responds less well to vaccination.
## Why parvovirus is the one to respect
Parvovirus is the reason the whole schedule is worth following exactly. It causes severe bloody diarrhoea and vomiting, it dehydrates a puppy in a day or two, and it kills. The virus survives in soil and on surfaces for months and resists most household cleaners, so a puppy does not need to meet a sick dog to catch it — a patch of ground where an infected dog was weeks ago is enough. Treatment is intensive, expensive and sometimes unsuccessful. Vaccination is not a formality here.
Distemper is equally serious and can leave permanent neurological damage in survivors. Rabies is fatal, without exception, and it is transmissible to humans, which is why it is regulated rather than optional.
## The socialisation problem, and how to solve it
Here is the genuine tension in puppy raising. A puppy is not fully protected until roughly a week or two after its final vaccination, and until then public ground where unvaccinated dogs go is a real risk. But the critical window for socialisation — learning that people, noises, surfaces, cars and other animals are normal — closes at around twelve to sixteen weeks, and a puppy kept in isolation until it is fully vaccinated often grows into a fearful adult. Behavioural problems from missed socialisation cause more dogs to be given up than parvovirus does.
The answer is not to choose one. It is to socialise safely: carry the puppy outside to see the street, the boulevard, traffic and people without putting it down on the ground. Invite friends to your home. Introduce it to dogs you know are vaccinated and healthy, in your own space. Let it walk on tiles, wood, grass in your own yard, and hear a hairdryer, a doorbell, a motorbike. All of that is available before the course is complete.
What to avoid until your vet says it is safe: public parks and beaches, the places where street dogs gather, and dog groups of unknown vaccination status.
## Practical points that make the visit go well
Bring the puppy a little hungry so treats work as reward. Bring any paperwork from the breeder or previous owner — a partial course elsewhere changes what we do next. Expect us to weigh the puppy and examine it properly each time; the check-up is as valuable as the injection, and it is where things like heart murmurs, hernias and retained testicles get picked up early.
Mild tiredness or a slightly sore spot for a day afterwards is normal and common. What is not normal: facial swelling, hives, vomiting, difficulty breathing or collapse within minutes to hours of the vaccine. Those are allergic reactions and need us immediately — they are rare, and they are treatable when seen quickly.
Keep the vaccination record safe. You will need it for boarding, for grooming, and above all for travel — the rabies date and the microchip number are what every border asks for, and a lost booklet is a genuine problem to reconstruct.
## If the schedule slips
It happens. If a dose is late, do not restart from scratch on your own assumption and do not simply skip forward. Bring the puppy in and let us look at the interval — depending on how late it is and the puppy's age, the answer is sometimes to continue and sometimes to add a dose. Guessing is what leaves a dog half-protected.
If you have just taken on a puppy in Batumi and are not sure where you are in the course, bring whatever records you have and we will map out the year with you.