Prioritizing preventive medicine

What diseases should most concern veterinary teams? Meghan Herron, DVM, DACVB, FFCV, a senior director of behavior, research, and education at Gigi’s, a shelter organization in Ohio, discusses which infectious disease poses the biggest risk to the pet population and prioritizing protective treatments against parasites, in a dvm360 interview recorded at the Kansas City Convention Center in Missouri.

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Herron delivered a series of continuing education (CE) sessions at the 2025 Fetch dvm360 Conference in Kansas City. Her topics included “Puppy socialization or infectious disease prevention: Can’t we have both?” This CE session addressed the consequences of failure to adequately socialize puppies at a time they are most vulnerable to infectious diseases, and how to achieve both missions of setting up young canines for behavioral success while also protecting them from viruses and parasites.

The following is a transcript of the video:

Meghan Herron, DVM, DACVB, FFCV: The biggest infectious disease risk that has us all in terror is going to be canine parvovirus. So making sure that we are providing vaccination on regular schedules. Remember that our puppies are competing with maternal antibodies and vaccines will often be annihilated, essentially, by maternal antibodies, and so we need to be vaccinating them at regular intervals. If they're in a shelter, as early as 4 weeks of age, and then following that, every 2 to 4 weeks until we're at 16 to 20 weeks of age. So that is your first step.

We also can't forget about endo and ectoparasites. So making sure that we have our ectoparasite control for fleas and ticks, we have our endo parasite. [With] puppies—'worms and germs,’ as my kids like to say—we want to protect them with regular deworming as well as prevention. But it often comes with our monthly heart worm prevention, so that we are keeping them free of those worms and germs, because we take for granted that endo and ecto parasitism can actually cause quite a bit of harm to these puppies as well.

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For more coverage of the Fetch Kansas City conference, visit the dvm360 conference news page. You can also learn more and register for the 2026 Fetch dvm360 Conference in Kansas City here.