Will Falconer, DVM Moderator
Hi Karen,
I'm glad you're finding help through these pages.
While I agree that your risk of rabies, based on your locale, is very low, it's also important to know that for natural immunity to "take" in an exposed dog, there's got to be something live in that exposure. So, in my earlier post about Parvo/Distemper Immunity w/o Vaccination, those pups were contacting live parvovirus and distemper virus in small, controlled exposures.
When Louann wrote in that she'd achieved the same results with rabies, she was speaking about exposure to *recently* vaccinated pups as the source. In other words, they could be shedding virus in the early stages after they were vaccinated. Exposure to animals weeks or more from being vaccinated would likely not confer this same immune response, as the shedding would had stopped.