Dog Vaccination Schedule + Reminder App

“When is Bruno due for his shots?” is a question most dog owners re-Google every single year — and then re-Google in a different month, because the answer moved. The schedule is not one interval. It is several intervals, running at different speeds, on one dog.

This is what a dog’s vaccination schedule actually looks like, why “once a year” quietly stopped being true, and how to stop holding the dates in your head.

One note before anything else: this is not veterinary advice. The exact schedule for your dog depends on age, health, local law and lifestyle, and your vet is the one who decides it. What follows is the shape of the thing, not a prescription.

What vaccines does a dog actually need?

Vets split dog vaccines into two groups, and the split is the part most owners never get told.

Core vaccines go to essentially every dog:

• Distemper, adenovirus (hepatitis), parvovirus and parainfluenza — given together as the combination shot written on the card as DHPP, DAPP, DHPPi or CHPPi depending on which country you are standing in and which brand your clinic stocks. Same job, different abbreviation.
• Rabies — required by law in most of the United States and across the EU, and required for essentially any border crossing, boarding kennel or groomer that asks.

Non-core vaccines depend on risk, not on species:

• Leptospirosis — a bacterial infection picked up from standing water and wildlife urine. Common in dogs that swim, hike or live rurally, and often boosted annually.
• Bordetella (kennel cough) — usually required by boarding kennels, daycare and some groomers. Intranasal or injectable, and the interval is short.
• Lyme and canine influenza — regional. Your vet knows whether your postcode justifies them.

The practical consequence: two dogs on the same street can have legitimately different vaccination schedules, and neither owner is doing it wrong.

When does a puppy get its first vaccination?

The puppy series is the densest stretch of a dog’s whole vaccination life, and it is front-loaded into a few weeks.

Puppies are born with maternal antibodies that protect them and, inconveniently, also neutralise a vaccine. Nobody can measure exactly when those antibodies fade, so the series covers the window by repeating:

1. Around 6–8 weeks — first combination shot.
2. Every 2–4 weeks after that — repeated until roughly 16 weeks of age.
3. Rabies at 12–16 weeks — the exact age is set by local law, not by preference.
4. A booster about a year after the series ends — this one is the single most commonly missed appointment in a dog’s life, because by then the puppy chaos is over and nobody is thinking about vaccines any more.

That one-year booster is worth setting a reminder for the day you leave the clinic with the last puppy shot. Twelve months is exactly long enough to forget.

Do dogs need vaccinations every year?

This is where the folk wisdom is out of date. “Annual shots” was the rule for decades; current guidance splits the schedule by component.

After the adult booster, several core components are typically boosted every three years rather than annually. Rabies varies — one-year and three-year formulations both exist, and which one your dog received is written on the certificate. Meanwhile some non-core vaccines run annually or more often: leptospirosis is usually yearly, and Bordetella can be every six to twelve months depending on the product and how much daycare your dog does.

So a realistic adult dog’s calendar has a three-year item, a one-year item and possibly a six-month item running simultaneously, all seeded from different start dates. A single annual reminder catches at most one of them. That mismatch — not forgetfulness — is why people miss boosters.

Keeping the schedule somewhere other than your head

The fix is not a better memory. It is writing down two dates per vaccine and letting something else do the counting.

That is the whole job PawVet is built for. Each dog gets a profile, and each vaccine entry holds:

• the vaccine name — quick-fill buttons cover the common ones in your language (in English: rabies, FVRCP, FeLV, DHPP), and anything else is free text, so Lepto 4 or Bordetella intranasal goes in exactly as written on the card;
• the date it was given;
• the next due date your vet named;
• the vet’s name and any notes.

Then the reminder fires at 9am the morning before, and the notification says “Bruno: DHPP — Vaccination due tomorrow.” Not “a pet is due for something.” Morning-before, deliberately, so there is still a working day left to phone the clinic.

Two things PawVet does not do, because being clear about this is more useful than pretending:

• It does not calculate the next due date for you. You type the date the vet gave you. The interval depends on the exact product, the dog’s age and local rules, and an app guessing three years when the vial said one would be worse than useless.
• It does not replace the stamped card or EU pet passport. That document is what a border, a kennel or a new clinic legally accepts. PawVet holds your copy of the same information.

Multiple dogs, or a dog and a cat

One dog is a calendar entry. Two dogs plus a cat is a scheduling problem, because none of the intervals line up and the species do not even share vaccines.

Every pet in PawVet gets its own record and its own due dates, and the calendar tab shows all of them on one agenda — vaccinations marked with !, medications with •, vet visits with ✦ — so a booster does not hide behind a worming reminder. If your household runs several animals, the multi-pet setup goes into more detail, and the general dog-and-cat vaccine rundown covers the cat side.

When someone asks for the history

Kennels, groomers, insurers and new clinics all ask the same question: what has this dog had, and when? Answering from memory in a waiting room is how gaps get created.

PawVet exports the whole record as a one-page PDF — species, breed, birthday and current weight at the top, then every vaccination, vet visit and medication in date order, newest first. It comes out named Bruno-health-record-2026-09-02.pdf, not a random UUID, which matters when it lands in a vet’s inbox. The PDF export walkthrough shows what the page looks like.

Is there an app that reminds me when my dog’s vaccination is due?

Yes — that is precisely what this one is. Free covers one pet and three vaccination records, which is enough to run a single dog’s core schedule. The subscription adds unlimited pets, unlimited vaccinations, medication tracking with reminders and the vet PDF export. If you want to see how it compares with the alternatives, including where it loses, the honest comparison is exactly that.

Common questions

What vaccines does a dog actually need?

Core vaccines are given to every dog — distemper, adenovirus/hepatitis, parvovirus and parainfluenza (the DHPP or DAPP combination), plus rabies. Non-core vaccines depend on where the dog lives and what it does — leptospirosis, Bordetella (kennel cough), Lyme and canine influenza are lifestyle vaccines your vet recommends or skips based on risk.

When does a puppy get its first vaccination?

The puppy series usually starts around 6 to 8 weeks and repeats every 2 to 4 weeks until roughly 16 weeks, because maternal antibodies interfere with the vaccine until then. Rabies is typically given between 12 and 16 weeks depending on local law, and a booster follows about a year after the series finishes.

Do dogs need vaccinations every year?

Not all of them. Modern guidance splits the schedule by component — several core components are boosted every three years once the adult booster is done, while some non-core vaccines such as leptospirosis and Bordetella are annual or more frequent. That mix is exactly why a single yearly catch-all reminder tends to miss something.

Is there an app that reminds me when my dog’s vaccination is due?

Yes. PawVet stores each vaccine with the date it was given and the next due date your vet named, then sends a local notification at 9am the morning before, naming the dog and the vaccine. It is free for one pet and three vaccination records, and it is available on Google Play.

Does a vaccination app replace my dog’s vaccination card?

No. The paper card or EU pet passport with the vet’s stamp is the document that counts for travel, boarding and kennels. An app is your copy of the same information — searchable, backed up, and exportable as a PDF when a new clinic asks for the history.

PawVet is available on Google Play. Download it and start your dog’s record today.