How Long to Keep Vaccination Records on File

Two clocks run over the same piece of paper

Search for how long to keep vaccination records on file and you will get a number back quickly. Very often it is the wrong number for you, because it was written for a veterinary practice rather than for a pet-care business, and those two duties come from different places in the code.

Keeping them apart is the whole job of this page. Below: the clock that runs on your business, then the clock that runs on your veterinarian, then the specific mistake that comes from mixing the two.

The clock that runs on your business

Colorado is the clearest place to start, because it says who is covered before it says for how long. Its licensing classes are enumerated and they include a Pet Grooming Facility and a Pet Animal Boarding and/or Training Facility, each location separately licensed. A licensee then has to maintain the required records at the physical facility address specified in the license application for two years after disposition of the animal the record was made for, and produce them to any authorized inspector. Note that this retention clock applies only to whatever records that licensee's class is actually required to hold. Colorado's specific immunization-record duty is written for boarded animals, not grooming-only visits.^{Source 1Source 2Source 12}

Iowa sets a shorter floor and is unusually explicit about vaccination paperwork specifically. A boarding kennel or commercial kennel regulated under Iowa Code chapter 162 makes and retains records for 12 months for each animal boarded, groomed or trained, and the same paragraph adds that vaccine records and exemptions for those animals must also be kept on file for 12 months. Both duties bind the kennel itself. Grooming performed by a standalone salon that does not operate as a licensed boarding or commercial kennel is not reached by this provision.^{Source 3Source 4}

New York City is a year, and it is worth reading twice because of what it holds you to. The proof itself has to be maintained on the premises for at least one year and provided to the Department on request, and separately a permitted entity keeps a one year record of boarding, grooming, training and the other services it renders. Holding a log entry saying you saw a certificate is not the same as holding the certificate.^{Source 5Source 6}

The clock that runs on your veterinarian

Washington's chapter 246-933 WAC governs veterinary medical facilities, not pet-care businesses. Inside it, records are legible, readily retrievable and kept for three years following the last treatment or examination, and the enumerated contents of that record explicitly include the immunization record. Three years is therefore the veterinarian's clock. It is not a kennel's and it is not a groomer's.^{Source 7Source 8}

Colorado sets its veterinary floor at three years after the animal patient's last medical examination. Put that beside the two years a Colorado pet animal facility keeps its own records and you can see both clocks running inside one state at once, at different lengths, from different starting events, against the same dog.^{Source 9Source 2}

Utah runs longer. A veterinarian there maintains veterinary medical records for a minimum of five years from the date the animal was last treated. The practical consequence is that the same record can still be retrievable from a Utah clinic long after a Washington or Colorado clinic's duty has lapsed.^{Source 10}

Texas puts a separate clock on the rabies certificate itself. Under the Texas board's rules as compiled in 2022, the veterinarian who issued the certificate, or the practice where it was issued, keeps a readily retrievable copy for not less than five years from the date of issuance. That is a document-specific duty sitting on top of whatever the general record rule says.^{Source 11}

The conflation that costs you

Here is how the mistake usually happens. An operator looks for a retention period, finds a clean figure for their own state, writes it into the policy, and never notices that the text they read was addressed to veterinary practices. The number was real. It was just never speaking to them.

The failure runs in both directions, and only one of them is cheap. Borrowing a longer period than you owe is merely wasteful. Borrowing a shorter one means deleting a file that the rule for your own licence class still expected you to be holding, and finding that out during an inspection rather than before one.

There is one clause worth quoting rather than interpreting. Colorado's requirement is that the records sit at the physical facility address specified in the license application. What that means for an operator whose records live somewhere other than the building is a question for the licensing authority, not for a page like this one.^{Source 2}

Holding the file after the pet stops coming

Whichever number turns out to apply to you, the practical difficulty is the same, and it is not storage. It is that retention outlives the relationship. A client moves away, somebody tidies the shelf, and a file that was supposed to survive another year or two goes with it. Nothing about that felt like a compliance decision at the time it happened.

PawPermit keeps the document itself against the pet rather than a typed summary of it, and the record stays on file after the pet stops attending, which is the behaviour a clock measured from departure actually needs. Which number applies to you, in your jurisdiction and for your licence class, is still yours to confirm.