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Old December 17th, 2006, 12:05 PM
barkley21 barkley21 is offline
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Raw and Blood Tests

I was just wondering how often all you other raw feeders out there get blood work done on your dogs/cats? I read somewhere that you should have them done right when you start feeding raw (as a benchmark to measure the following ones against) and then once a year after that. Does that sound about right? We had blood work done on Barkley shortly after we switched him to raw and they came back great....sodium level was a tad low, but nothing to worry about according to our vet.
Should we just wait until next year to have the next blood test done or do all of you do it more frequently than that? While on the topic of bloodwork, can they do the titers at that time or is that a whole other test? I'm not too familiar with the titers because we haven't had them done yet. Is it just a blood test as well?
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Old December 17th, 2006, 03:07 PM
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mummummum mummummum is offline
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When we were rawing, I started with a baseline then followed up yearly with a full panel and chem screen.

Titers are little more complicated as the timing of each test very much depends on the age of your dog and what you are testing. I would suggest you go over this with your holistic Vet.
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Old December 17th, 2006, 08:52 PM
barkley21 barkley21 is offline
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Thanks mummummum. I did check with our holistic vet, but just as different vets have different opinions as to when and how much to vaccinate, I just wanted to get some other people's opinions and hear how they do things with respect to blood tests...just to compare.
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Old December 17th, 2006, 09:57 PM
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we got a few blood-tests done along the road, mostly before a medical procedure (maika's spay, and dakotah's tooth surgery, for example) and everything is right on the dot so we'll probably hold off on any more for a year or two.
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Old December 17th, 2006, 11:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by barkley21 View Post
Thanks mummummum. I did check with our holistic vet, but just as different vets have different opinions as to when and how much to vaccinate, I just wanted to get some other people's opinions and hear how they do things with respect to blood tests...just to compare.
I just want to make sure we're reading from the same book Barkley, so forgive me if I'm telling you something you already know...With titers you're measuring the level of remaining antigen to a virus which has been embedded first by colostrom and then by a specific modified live, a killed or a recombinant core vaccine (which is of course the virus itself in altered form). So while titering can tell you immune levels, titering will not tell you memory cell protection. It's good (but not absolutely necessary) to know how long and how well your dog was breastfed but really you could start titering for CDV and CPV separately at 16 weeks then determine whether boostering ~ separately !~ is needed. And so on for the remainder of the normal protocol. You would of course want to check titer levels if you feel that exposure to a virus may happen or has happened.
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Old December 18th, 2006, 10:25 AM
barkley21 barkley21 is offline
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Thank you Techno and Mummummum. That's all the info I needed
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