Sounds Like A Goose

This honking sounding cough is the classic sound of an upper respiratory tract infection in a dog. Many people refer to it as bordetella or "kennel cough" there are several different viruses that make up the complex that can cause this disease. Kind of like the flu is caused by many different viral strains. Yes our girl was current on her vaccines, but vaccines unfortunately don't cover all the different forms, just like with the flu shot. Hoping it will however make her symptoms less severe. She has a mild case luckily. She only coughs when excited or on lead. I only heard her cough twice last night in her crate. So we are crating her and keeping her quiet so she can rest. This disease can cause a fever and for a dog to go off it's food, and it can cause them to cough up white foamy stuff. You can even get a green nasal discharge, and it can lead to pneumonia. I don't think Bumpers case will be even close to progressing that far, but we are doing some at home care with instructions from our vet to bring her in ASAP at the first sign that she's getting worse. We are running a vaporizer for her, and soaking her food until soft with chicken broth. You can even coupage them, a type of rhythmic thumping performed on the chest to break up phlegm, but I don't feel she needs this just yet. The vet would prescribe antibiotic and cough suppressants in severe cases. This is a highly contagious disease that is airborne, so hoping the rest of my dogs stay well, we have her in our bedroom, But I'm sure the others have already been exposed. I think we caught it from the dog show we were at last weekend, which stinks, cause she couldn't show this past Sunday cause she coughed every time I put the lead on her. I was polite enough to keep my dog at home. There is also a form of canine influenza that can mimic the signs of kennel cough, but dogs usually are a bit sicker that our girl is.