They get tapeworms by ingesting fleas or flea eggs. By controlling fleas, you're not going to ever have tapeworms.

Yes, unless your indoor dog never goes outside, although I don't think any dogs are like that.

Intestinal parasites can be passed inside the womb of the female dog onto her puppies. In other words, they can be transmitted before they're even born, or in the course of being born, or puppies can also get them just from the environment. An adult dog can pick up parasites by, say, walking through a dog park, then licking their foot, and ingesting an egg. And then, they will have the parasites.

Yes. We can completely treat and cure your dog of all intestinal parasites.

That's a great question. With core vaccines like rabies and the FVRCP, if your cat is vaccinated, the protection there will be excellent. So the answer to that is yes. The leukemia vaccine is also highly effective, but ideally, the information you would need would be the other cat’s status. If you have another cat that you're bringing into the house, they must have a leukemia and feline AIDS test done before understand if they are positive because that will potentially put your cat at risk. With that said, the leukemia vaccine is very effective, so most of the time, we are pretty comfortable with that. Still, it’s vital to understand the status so that you can help control environmental exposure.

Stuff happens, and sometimes the vaccine dates are off. The best thing to do is get in as quickly as possible so that the veterinarian can discuss lifestyle with you and make the appropriate recommendations on which vaccines need to be continued and how often. If you've missed the initial booster series—for example, if a leukemia vaccine was given, and then you miss the booster a month later, if it's beyond six weeks from the initial vaccine, it does have to be started over. And so you have to do the initial series of two vaccines a month apart. The immune system must get that initial boost to provide the full immunity that we want.

If your cat has never had vaccines before, most of the vaccines require a booster. The one notable distinction is the rabies vaccine, which does not need a booster right after. In Tarrant County, Texas, the law states the first vaccine given for rabies has to be one year. After that, it can be every three years if we have a documented record of a one-year rabies vaccine. So that's how rabies works. The initial FVRCP vaccine—which is the other core viral vaccine in cats—is typically boostered a month later. As an adult cat, it's been shown that the FVRCP vaccine produces a robust immune response. With cats with a history of at least a vaccine previously with FVRCP as an adult cat, we give that vaccine every three years. The non-core leukemia vaccine, which is given based on the cat’s lifestyle, has to be boostered a month after the initial vaccine and then annually after that.