Kennel Cough? Heartworms?

Anyone dealt with it before? I think my older dog has it I have no idea how she got it though! Unless our neighbor's dogs have it (lots of dogs in a small trailer). She started a few days hacking up mucous, I thought she had something caught in her throat (which is actually how it's described), but it's not getting any better. The couple vet videos I watched recommended letting it run it's course... but at what point do I need to take her in? We have a second dog as well. The one that has it is a medium size (48 lb) 10 year old dog, the other dog is a smaller (21 lb) not-quite-1-year-old pup. ODS is in tears, worried his dog is going to die (the younger one). He came in at that part of the video...

Id let it run its course as long as she is eating and drinking and starts to improve after 3 days

It is not always bacterial and could be a virus, in which case antibiotics are uselessly BUT they can develop a secondary bacterial infection

Keep her quiet, warm (do you have a heating pad available?) with lots a of fluids - flavoured water if necessary (Pretty much the same as with people

Quiet and warm? Oh boy... Of course she has decided she no longer likes to be confined and has free reign of the yard. We actually just took down the fence for her lot to move in something for our other dog (who could fit through the squares) - she would bark constantly until she finally figured a way out. This, after always being very good and respecting fences for so many years. I just tossed a chicken carcass yesterday - safe enough to pull it out of the trash and boil it for liquid for her? Or too far gone? I'm sure she'd eat it if given the slightest opportunity (blech! dogs are nasty when it comes to the things they deem edible. YDS lost a pair of underwear last week after having an accident in it and DH setting it on the trunk of a car).

Bordetella is usually self limiting, but can progress into pneumonia. When dogs have bordetella their activity level and appetite is usually not affected, so if she becomes lethargic or loses interest in eating, I would suspect that she has a secondary infection and likely would need antibiotics.

I don't know if you can get her to drink this concoction, but if you can I would give it a try- I was getting sick a few weeks ago, and this cleared it right up in less than 24 hours.

Bring a cup of water almost to a boil.
Add the juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of ginger
raw honey to taste

*I didn't have any ginger at the time and used bottled lemon juice (for canning) and this worked anyway!

For her cough, pineapple juice or chunks of the fruit itself are very effective cough suppressants.

To make the above recipe more palatable to her you might try making it with broth instead of water- and you might be able to coat the pineapple with peanut butter or canned dog food to get her to eat it. It sounds pretty disgusting to me, but she might like it. :roll:

If she wont take the liquid, and you have a syringe or even a turkey baster you can force feed it to her- just put the tip between her lips and molars and syringe it slowly into her mouth.

I hope she feels better soon! :clover:

I noticed when she was napping on the porch side by side with the other dog her breathing is noticeably faster. I wouldn't say labored, but I wouldn't say it was "normal." Is there a test to show bacterial vs. viral?

I have everything for that concoction I believe. Pretty sure I have some raw honey left (my source never got to the hives this year ). Of course we just ate the fresh pinapple I bought the night before last, and I am pretty sure I wiped out our pantry stock a couple weeks ago making carrot salad. <br /><br /> __________ Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:12 pm __________ <br /><br /> One thing I just thought about is she did test HW positive about 6 weeks ago, but the vet said it was very early and she's been getting HW preventative to kill off the babies (we got her just a couple weeks before I found out I was PG with my oldest and going through the sleep deprived baby years meant that I was pretty hit or miss with the HW preventative... I feel like we failed her, and we're trying our best to make it up to her in her last years ). Could that have progressed that fast??

heritage":1hx3bmwf said:

Is there a test to show bacterial vs. viral?

Click to expand...

I know that one has a sudden onset, while the other is gradual... it's in one of my pediatric health care books... I'll see if I can find the reference for you.

Kennel cough/bordetella will normally clear up on its own, especially in a young otherwise healthy dog.
I had a dog once that had heartworm, the coughing can be a sign that some of the dead microfilaria has gone to the lungs. When my dog was undergoing treatment we was told to keep him quiet for a month after treatment to try and prevent that from happening, that can cause a secondary infection such as pneumonia.

JessicaR":2aljhylb said:

Kennel cough/bordetella will normally clear up on its own, especially in a young otherwise healthy dog.
I had a dog once that had heartworm, the coughing can be a sign that some of the dead microfilaria has gone to the lungs. When my dog was undergoing treatment we was told to keep him quiet for a month after treatment to try and prevent that from happening, that can cause a secondary infection such as pneumonia.

Click to expand...

They didn't say anything about side effects from the medicine, but that doesn't surprise me. He's a bit of a crackpot. How long does it take for the dead ones to start moving? She has had two doses of HW preventative.

I cant recall, it has been about 15 years since my dog was treated. All I know is he got IV medicine and had to stay overnight, and the vet said that their can be complications such as the microfilaria or the adult heartworm itself could go to the lungs causing infection or even an embolism (with the adults). I believe our treatment was a pretty aggressive treatment because he had a severe case. My parents didn't believe in taking animals to the vet so he had never been to the vets in his 8 years of life, until I moved out and took him myself.

I believe though after 2 months they should be dying off since heartworm medicine is not actually a preventative anyways, it just kills any microfilaria before they have a chance to mature into breeding adults.

He said that the preventative would just kill off the babies, preventing them from maturing, but from what I have been reading and watching today, it's actually been a way to fully treat them as well. A slower, but safer option than the traditional way, supposedly.

If she is breathing more frequently she may have fluid in her lungs requiring her to breathe twice as fast to get enough oxygen

A vet visit might be prudent

Dood - you think it might be more serious then? I'll have to see how she's doing first thing in the AM. DH heard her the other day and was trying to decide if we needed to start making long term decisions . I know older dogs can go from fine to not fine real quick, but I don't know how to judge just how serious she is (DH likes animals, but doesn't like the idea of dropping $1K on vet bills so I have to find the balance). I have been looking for another medium to large dog as we plan for her getting older (we live in the country and I am home with the kids a LOT so it's comforting having that presence around) but felt like it was a bit premature... maybe my hunch was spot on (like it is a lot of times, I just don't always listen to it). I'm second guessing kennel cough b/c a couple of sources said you can gently put pressure on their throat area and it should trigger a coughing spell, but it didn't seem to phase her at all. I actually haven't heard her cough since this morning and we were outside quite a bit.

I will say she has had a weird cough type thing for years - vet thought GI worms or heart worms, but that wasn't the case. He treated her for bronchitis years ago, but it never fully went away. I thought she maybe had a collapsed trachea, but he didn't seem to think so... she mainly just does it when she gets worked up running around.

"but at what point do I need to take her in?" The moment your gut tells you something is "off" and beyond your ability to fix honestly.

With heartworms there are two treatment methods; one is the slow kill by just resuming dosing with regular HW preventative. This method is SLOW, so slow it can take years (most vets will simply just recheck normally before allowing the purchase of more hw preventative). The fast kill method though they basically fill the dog with a poison to kill all the worms at once.

With both methods, any exercise can cause dead worms to clog valves in the heart or to be pulled into the lungs.

There is also some information that slow kill might actually be more dangerous to the dog as there's no telling when individual worms may die throughout the year; http://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/M ... d-To-Know/ is an interesting article

Oh wow, that article is so different than many of the others I read today! I find it odd and slightly frustrating that activity level was never mentioned to me when we discussed the heartworm issue... of course this is the most active she has ever been! If it is the dead worms moving, could she bounce back? Or is it one of those things that once the damage is done, it's done?