Lyme Vaccine For Dogs: 4 Crucial Reasons We Don’t Recommend It
November 9, 2026
Windy Knoll Goldens receives frequent inquiries about the Lyme vaccine for dogs. With the wide spread prevalence of deer ticks and Lyme cases all over Maine, it’s a very valid question. We do not administer the Lyme vaccine to our dogs nor do we recommend it to clients. The following four reasons explain our position.
The shot is developed from a smaller portion of the bacteria than most people expect. A 2021 paper in The Veterinary Journal reports that every Lyme bacterin vaccine sold in North America is made from just two laboratory strains of Borrelia burgdorferi. Consequently, a vaccine carrying one version of the OspC surface protein produces antibodies against strains with closely related versions and not against the rest. Lyme is caused by a bacterium with multiple strains and the current vaccine only targets a small number of them.
Lyme is a bacterial vaccine, and bacterial vaccines don’t produce long lasting immunity like core puppy vaccines. As a result, the Lyme shot has to be administered annually. It is not a shot we give here. Our puppies get one round of their own vaccines before go home day and your own vet takes it from there.
A 2005 Banfield Pet Hospital study of more than 1.2 million vaccinated dogs, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, looked at reactions diagnosed within three days of a shot. Of every vaccine it examined, the Lyme shot ranked highest in adverse events. The study showed a 1/230 reaction rate with 43.7 reactions per 10,000 doses. Most reactions involved facial swelling, hives, vomiting, or significant fatigue. A small number of the recorded cases were serious allergic reactions. The same study found that small dogs, adolescent dogs, and dogs given several vaccines in one visit were at the greatest risk.
The same team repeated the study across 2016 to 2020, a retrospective cohort of more than 4.6 million vaccinated dogs published in the same journal. Reaction rates were lower across the board. The Lyme vaccine came in at 19.1 reactions per 10,000 doses, similar in adverse events to the other vaccines. However, when the study’s authors accounted for a dog’s age, weight, sex, neuter status and breed, the Lyme shot still carried about 21 percent higher odds of a reaction than a visit that did not include it.
Plenty of dogs get bitten by a deer tick and never get sick. A researcher at the Ontario Veterinary College, writing with a coauthor at King’s College London, argued in a 2021 opinion paper that vaccinating dogs for Lyme is unwarranted, because clinical disease is rare and cases respond readily to treatment. The UC Davis Veterinary Teaching Hospital does not generally recommend the Lyme vaccine for dogs in northern California either, where the incidence is low. Though it notes there are counties where it is higher and vaccination could be considered. When a dog does get sick, a course of antibiotics usually clears it up.
Our dogs are out in the fields and woods every day, so ticks are part of life here. We mix garlic into their food as a natural repellent, go over them with our hands, and pull any tick we find right away. If one of our dogs does show signs of Lyme, we support the immune system with herbs and vitamin C. Our post on natural flea and tick protocols covers exactly what we use.
Our health/vaccine protocol has been thoughtfully developed over many years breeding and raising golden retrievers. This is what we do with our own dogs. It is not a prescription for your own golden. The Lyme vaccination is a decision for your family and your veterinarian. If your dog ever seems unusually tired, rapidly loses appetite, or starts limping after a tick bite, please follow up with your local vet.
