What’s in a Cough?

What’s in a Cough?

Coughs come in many varieties. Some are harmless, temporary coughs. Others are harmless, lingering coughs. Some are developing into something worse. Others are a part of life that can only be minimized and never cured?
A cough that’s accompanied by lost appetite or lethargic behavior needs to be examined by your vet. That could be pneumonia, flu, or serious heart disease. A pneumonia cough could be productive, meaning that it sounds moist, and you may observe the pet swallowing something afterwards. You might have heard that it’s okay to give cough remedies from the drugstore to your dog, but that’s not always safe. The main purpose of coughing is to remove junk from the lungs and the windpipe. Stifling this action with a cough suppressant would be undesirable if there is material that really needs to be cleared out, so check first with your vet.

A cough that has seemed to go on forever is often allergen-induced or related to the shape and structural integrity of the airway. Allergen-induced coughs might include asthma in cats. You can not usually cure asthma by removing the offending particle from your pet’s environment, but substances such as kitty litter dust, perfumes, cigarette smoke and pollens/spores can irritate the condition. Minimizing these offenders might allow brief breaks from asthma medication throughout the year. Collapsing trachea is a condition that has to do with the shape and strength of the airway. If the trachea isn’t strong enough to stay open when a deep breath is taken, it collapses partially, and that’s very irritating to the membranes inside. For a long time, the only treatment for collapsing trachea was to dampen the sensitivity of those membranes. It only worked partially and only worked some of the time. Newer surgical techniques are being developed that are meant to hold the airway wide open all the time.

A hacking, barking type of cough is probably the most frequent one we observe. The pet continues to be active and eats normally but typically can not rest well due to the constant interruptions in her sleep. These are frequently due to infectious upper respiratory disease (which is often called “kennel cough”—erroneously, though, since it usually does not come from a kennel). This type of infection has become a little more fraught with danger since the advent of canine flu, because serious cases of influenza will begin the same way as the old-style “kennel cough” infection. Most of this type cough can be managed pretty efficiently with a timely trip to the vet. The doctor will make every attempt to ensure that this cough is not a developing case of the flu.

Finally, don’t ever discount a cough because it’s not very loud. The quiet ones are often a more serious threat to the patient’s health. It’s never a bad idea to take a video of your pet’s at-home behavior and carry that to the vet visit with you.

Dr. M. S. Regan