Dog vaccine question

[Guest guest]

I just purchased a AKC golden retriever to raise & train for a service

dog for Allie. My first question is do dog vaccines indeed have

thimerosal in them now? My second question is should I follow the

typical vaccine routine? I just read the following regarding parvo,

one I'm greatly concerned about as it plagues our area and I'm taking

her everywhere:

Parvovirus

Parvovirus is probably the most common viral illness of

dogs at the present time. It is much more common in puppies than it is

in adult dogs. It can be very hard to successfully vaccinate a puppy

for this disease because the antibody protection the puppy acquires

from its mother can interfere with vaccination. It is important to

vaccinate puppies every three to four weeks for this virus starting at

6 weeks of age and continuing until they are at least 16 weeks of age

and preferably 20 weeks of age. It is possible that this vaccine

confers lifelong immunity once it does work but most veterinarians

continue to recommend yearly vaccination for it. It seems prudent to

at least get the vaccination at one year of age. Since it is combined

with the other vaccines it is often easier just to give it yearly with

them.

The lingo used above sounds suspiciously familiar, I don't want to

hurt this dog, she cost lots of money and we're already falling in

love with her. She had a shot at 6 wks, she's 8 wks old today. In

reading about dog vaccines, it sounds that the canine vaccine program

is even in more chaos than the human program, if that was possible. At

the same time, I wanna make sure we have her covered, esp when time

comes to allow her in school.

TIA,

Debi