Kennel cough... or not

[CrunchieBoi]

We have an old (11yo) mongrel that we adopted around 7 years ago. She has never had to have vet treatment other than vaccinations, is fed a raw diet and always been super healthy. Generally walks 4 miles a day all in.

At the very end of July this year she developed a cough, far as I recall this was the timeline of events...

Start of August: Took her to the vet, we'd noticed her coughing at night mostly. Firstly prescribed loxicom which we had her on for a fortnight with no improvement.

Mid-August: Started on antibiotic 1 (can't recall exactly which). No improvement after a week. Then put onto antibiotic 2 and advised to have her sedated for heart echo, lung flush and chest X-ray if no improvement.

The cough went away after a two week course of antibiotic 2 and she was back to normal. In the meantime she had her heart echo but we decided not to have the other stuff as it required sedation and the cough had gone away. Heart echo showed nothing of concern.

A week after she'd finished the first lot of antibiotic 2, the cough returned. She got another 2 week course which brought us to about a week ago.

She started coughing ever so slightly again and I suspect this is a return of the same cough. My vet has this down as kennel cough because antibiotic 2 did completely suppress it. I'm starting to wonder if it's something else though, is kennel cough really this stubborn? Anyone have any similar experience?

 

[CorvusCorax]

There's a lot of it about and reinfections can happen but due to her age I would be concerned about it being a symptom of something eise.

 

[Aru]

We have an old (11yo) mongrel that we adopted around 7 years ago. She has never had to have vet treatment other than vaccinations, is fed a raw diet and always been super healthy. Generally walks 4 miles a day all in.

At the very end of July this year she developed a cough, far as I recall this was the timeline of events...

Start of August: Took her to the vet, we'd noticed her coughing at night mostly. Firstly prescribed loxicom which we had her on for a fortnight with no improvement.

Mid-August: Started on antibiotic 1 (can't recall exactly which). No improvement after a week. Then put onto antibiotic 2 and advised to have her sedated for heart echo, lung flush and chest X-ray if no improvement.

The cough went away after a two week course of antibiotic 2 and she was back to normal. In the meantime she had her heart echo but we decided not to have the other stuff as it required sedation and the cough had gone away. Heart echo showed nothing of concern.

A week after she'd finished the first lot of antibiotic 2, the cough returned. She got another 2 week course which brought us to about a week ago.

She started coughing ever so slightly again and I suspect this is a return of the same cough. My vet has this down as kennel cough because antibiotic 2 did completely suppress it. I'm starting to wonder if it's something else though, is kennel cough really this stubborn? Anyone have any similar experience?

Sounds like it's time for an xray and some diagnostics.
It'll answer a lot of questions quickly and should rule in and out a lot of potentially causes of a chronic cough.

Bronchitis would be a very common cause at this age can, can occasionally improve on antibiotics but is a chronic lifelong condition once it's starts in older dogs. You can diagnose it on xrays.

 

[CrunchieBoi]

We're off to the vet again at the end of the week to see what they suggest. I have a week off work in the second week of October so hopefully investigations can wait until then, just wondered if anyone had experience of anything similar.

 

[CrunchieBoi]

Turned out to be mycoplasma if anyone is interested, something we're familiar with because it's so common in pet rats.

We have another dog who showed no symptoms in the same time frame, but might well have been carrying it and was continually reinfecting her. Luckily it never progressed to her lower respiratory tract so the vet is hopeful that the correct antibiotic (doxycycline) will clear it up.

Both of our dogs are to have a fortnight's worth of treatment with antibiotics.

 

[CrunchieBoi]

Is kennel cough dangerous or life-threatening? While a nuisance, kennel cough is not normally dangerous and is likely to need no treatment at all. But in puppies, elderly dogs or those with existing illnesses, the condition can be more serious and can develop into pneumonia.

Our girl is 11 so probably falls into the elderly category. It's more the fact this has failed to clear up in the space of 3 months that's concerning me. The antibiotics which are meant to target this particular strain don't seem to be doing much as yet.