kennel cough leading to persistent coughing

[silvia]

dear all

unfortunately, despite Oberon is >5 years old now, here we are again with a burst of kennel cough.. it has been ~23days now, and, although the situation was never acute (just a few bursts of white foam in the worse days), the cough is persistent and it doesnt seem to get easier.. Is mainly in the morning and during runs and plays, but is still there everyday (no mucus most of the time)

Our vet believes that the kennel cough itself is now gone, but she is quite concerned that some dogs may end up with a chronic irritation of the windpipe. She had a dog herself that, after KC, developed a chronic dry cough for life. So she wants to be quite aggressive and gave us antiinflammatory plus also codein (20mg twice per day for 10 days).

do you have any experience with this, and with giving narcotic cough suppressant to an irish?? it seems a bit too much to me, but of course we will take it if this means giving a break to the coughing and helping an irritate windpipe not to get chronic..

obviously Oberon became addicted to his daily treat of teaspoon on manuka honey, but that's another story ; )

thanks!! all the best Silvia

[Finding_Beau]

Hi Silvia

The words "kennel cough" make my blood boil. My English Setter, Jessie died from the mismanagement of kennel cough by a vet specialist - my first very bad experience with a vet hospital - unfortunately one of many more to come. I cannot talk about what happened to Jessie because I will become too upset, and I am more than enough upset at the moment with what is happening to Hobson. Jessie would not have died if my vet after whom Hobson is named had not been away at the time.

Kennel cough should be able to be cured naturally. The worst thing I did was give Benadryl, which is a cough suppressant, to Jessie. Jessie only developed kennel cough after I started vaccinating her. I have never vaccinated my English Setters for kennel cough since. None of my English Setters have developed kennel cough since.

The majority of vets guess now. If the diagnosis is incorrect, the treatment can have disastrous consequences. I am not telling you what to do, only giving you a few suggestions. 1. You could try to find a good natural vet to give you another opinion. 2. If you want to stay with the current vet, ask her what needs to be done to obtain an accurate diagnosis of the problem before treatment, e.g. an x-ray or ultrasound. Has she run blood tests? If not, she should have run blood tests. If Oberon has an inflammatory problem, this should show up. Just because this vet had a dog that developed a chronic dry cough for life does not mean that this is Oberon's problem. This vet needs to be certain that Oberon has this particular health problem before she recommends aggressive treatment. Aggressive treatment is only warranted after the correct diagnosis has been made.

What annoys me about vets is that they do not take into account the "ranges". A perfect example is Hobson's blood test result on 8 October which was described as "unremarkable". The x-ray the following day showed that Hobson was dying from Hemangiosarcoma. I have been too upset to obtain this blood test result from Hobson's vet yet. I always ask for blood test and urinalysis results now so that I can ask questions and undertake research, if necessary. I recommend that you do the same.

This is only my humble opinion but I would not rush into this treatment until you have been given diagnostic proof that this is what is causing Oberon's cough. 

Sending Oberon many Hugs from all of us. Susan xxxxx