Hi there!

I am looking for any advice/help in dealing with a severe case of kennel cough. I took my baby to the groomers prior to going up north to the cottage on Aug 5, where I believe she contracted KC. I was at the cottage for a week and mid-week she started displaying all the typical KC symptoms: coughing, hacking, retching, coughing up white foamy liquid but otherwise was eating, drinking, energetic. When I got home I took her to the vet as her symptoms seemed to worsen not improve. He prescribed her Doxy antibiotics for 14 days. She seemed to be doing better for the first few days, sleeping through the night, less coughing, less foamy throw up.
However, after the first few initial days, she actually got worse. She started having heavy green mucous pouring down her nose, severe, nasal and chest congestion, lots of foamy throw up, so I took her to the vet once again. They did a chest Xray to test for pneumonia and they said she didn't show signs of pneumonia but she did have lots of mucous build up in her lungs. The vet gave her an anti-nausea shot, anti-acid medication (2 per day), and to continue on the doxy antibiotic for another week.
However, since then it has been almost a week with no clear improvement. I called the vet yesterday and asked them if there was anything else I could do, she switched her antibiotic to clavaseptin because it is supposed to be a broader range antibiotic that targets the lower and upper respiratory tract. I will give it a couple of days and see how she reacts to this new antibiotic, but if she does not improve by Monday I will have her hospitalized as it has been 3 weeks of her struggling with this illness.

If anyone has dealt with anything similar and has any advice they can offer me I am all ears. I haven't slept well in three weeks and neither has my poor baby. It is killing me watching her suffer like this. She is still severely congested, so she cannot get comfortable, she has very little energy, very little appetite (it's usually low but even more so), she is wheezy and her nose is constantly running. I should also note that I rescued her from a puppy mill when she was about 4 months, and she has a relatively weak immune system, I'm guessing because of where she came from, but illnesses usually hit her very hard and even as a puppy things that a healthy puppy would normally be able to fight off, she would catch from other pups.

Has she been heart worm tested recently? How old is she now? I've fought with reoccurring cough with my male but antibiotics alone never did anything for him. If you search allergy test I have a thread that goes through it all and I posted his chest x rays for comparison. There's a number of things that can moonlight as kennel cough. Did they try to take a swab of her nose to look at her mucus under a scope?

Hi, thank you for the reply! She was tested for heartworm in the Spring, either in April or May and she's been on prevention medication since, but I will definitely ask the vet about it. She is about 3 and a half now. She presented with a mild nose congestion earlier this year around springtime, and the vet attributed this to allergies. so a few nights ago I wanted to see if perhaps her allergies could be causing this, so I picked up some Benadryl but it did not seem to help one bit, she had no relief from her symptoms.

The reason the vet and I suspected KC is because she has an incident about 2 years ago where she caught kennel cough and the same symptoms presented, the honking, the coughing, the retching and coughing up white phlegm. But in that case she was improving daily without antibiotics and it cleared completely in 2 weeks, whereas this time around it seems (in the words of the vet) that she has a secondary bacterial infection that is causing this heavy mucous. They did not do a mucous swab at the time, but perhaps they will suggest it if she does not improve by Monday.

Heartworms can cause coughing whereas why I asked. If she's on prevention and been tested then I wouldn't worry too much on that. When we were on the hunt for our cause we did a nose swab and they looked at his snot under a scope for bacteria. We had eosinophils. A swab can give them a better idea what kind of bacteria they are actually dealing with. Sometimes they won't find out of the normal bacteria at all. Eosinophils suggest an allergic reaction. You can give clariton (loratadine) if you want to give it a try and see. I've given pretty much everything. The only thing that has worked is prednisone. Within two days of going on pred his coughing slows and in 5 days it's gone. Prednisone is a rough drug though so if you go on it and it works you still want to see if you can find the cause because you don't want to be on it for long if you can help it. My boy has eosinophilic bronchoneumopathy (EBP) but a fungal infection can cause similar symptoms. A nose swab might show if fungal but a bronchiscope does the best job, though a bit invasive. Here's a link to my thread to give you an idea what we tried and some other suggested causes we ran into .

https://www.itsahuskything.com/t17134-allergy-test-results-possible-answers?highlight=Allergy

I would look carefully at jenn's thread on allergy. The way you present the history mimics my personal battle with allergy and asthma going back more than 50 years.

https://www.itsahuskything.com/t16935-allergy-shots?highlight=Allergy+testing

thank you both for your reply, as you can imagine it's very scary and heartbreaking to have your pup going through something like this and not appearing to get better.

from reading your threads it seems to me that she fits very much the EBP diagnosis (I also read that link you posted). she pretty much has ALL those symptoms. it also states that dogs should be treated first with an antibiotic but usually do not show signs of improvement, and then treated with predisone, to reduce the inflammation in the airways. she just started the new antibiotics and she is supposed to be on them for 2 weeks, I don't want her to suffer for two more weeks like this. it says a bronchial wash is the best way to diagnose this, but that she will have to be put under for the procedure. I will definitely speak to my vet about this, thank you so much!!!

I suppose it could also be allergies too though?

Jenn is Kye on Pres daily for life?

I'm not sure it will be for life yet. We are working on finding his optimum dosage. Right now he's on 10mg prednisolone every other day but we are going to drop to 5 mg every other day. A girl I know whose husky also has it is on 2.5 mg every other day. Some dogs do apparently out grow it and can eventually be weaned off.

If you can do the scope I would suggest doing it. It can save you money if it does end up being EBP. I paid out the wazoo for allergy testing and medicated shampoo and wipes and chased allergies that I knew he had. Even pursued doing allergy shots. Luckily I found EBP before doing it because those I have talked to since with it say the shots don't work if dealing with EBP. It seems to only be pred responsive.

Note: since we know we are looking at long term pred use we have swapped to prednisolone. Prednisone was cheaper and that's why we started with it for testing sake but if going long term make sure you get on prednisolone. It's often more pricey (not horrible though) but it saves the liver. I also suggest really putting a lot of emphasis on nutrition. You said your girl was already immune compromised, my male was too, and the medication, while helping them breathe, is hard on the rest of the immune system. Wounds don't heal easy.

Ok thank you for all your guidance. In a way I feel a sense of relief because I feel like I might know what is wrong with her, whereas before I just felt lost because nothing seemed to work. I will let you know how it goes tomorrow at the vet. It just seems so unfair. Has your vet warned you against going certain places? We go on lots of hikes/dog parks and they have ravines, lakes, ponds etc. Could that aggravate this condition? I'm wondering what caused this onset.

Also, I tried to get her on raw when she was younger (chicken, turkey, beef) she more or less ate it at the beginning and refused to eat it as time went on. So I switched her to the best quality kibble on the market (in Canada). She eats well I would say but as most huskies isn't SUPER food motivated, unless WE are eating of course lol. I have tried fish oil supplements and glucosamine supplements when she was younger and I will start those again once she has recuperated. If you have any other advice on immune boosters I'd love to hear. It scares me a little that the Pred is an immune suppresser. I'm thinking that perhaps the nasal congestion and mucous she had as a younger pup could be attributed to this illness as well, it seemed to go away on its own then. It might have progressed to a more severe case as she's gotten older.

Kye has severe allergies, which doesn't help matters. My vet didn't tell me not to go certain places because most environmental allergens are floating in the air and the only way to avoid them would be to put him in a bubble and never let him out. EBP doesn't seem to start in until they are later in life, 3-6 years old (my boy is around 4) is when most cases are seen. So a dog could be completely normal growing up and then one day, bam!, it hits. Since yours has previous issues with what sounds like mild seasonal allergies it's likely if your dog developed EBP that the allergies progressed it along at a quicker rate. There is another dog, a Rott, at my vet office who always had seasonal allergies that could be handled using basic methods, clariton and benedryl and Apoquel, and then one day it all stopped working and the dog got so congested it had to go on oxygen and be sent to the university where it was scoped and diagnosed with EBP. EBP changes the wall structure of the ventrals and bronchi. It hardens them and makes them thicker (an extreme immune response to allergens that the body doesn't know how to turn off) which is why they look like spider webbing on an xray. Once they are hardened and thickened any mucus from normal allergies can't move and pack in making it nearly impossible for them to breath where if they didn't have the hardening they would be experiencing more normal allergies. Keeping known allergens you can control down to a minimum I think does help because it's just one less thing to aggravate an already out of control response, but I take my boy everywhere. Since he does have some grass allergies I still wipe him down if he's been in taller grass to keep him from being itchy.

I've taken my boy over to raw. We were on Taste of the Wild kibble before and when it became apparent he was going to be on pred for an extended period I went raw. Right now we are doing Grandma Lucy's freeze dried raw. I do the base mix and mix in muscle meat since he has some protein allergens as well I have to control. He loves it. Eventually when I get another freezer we will go diy raw and I will do it all myself. My other two dogs are on 50/50 kibble and raw still. I am also giving them fish oil w/ vitamin E. And we are doing golden turmeric paste which has many benefits.

Just an update: there were eosinophilc cells found in her nasal swab, to have a conclusive test she would need a bronchial lavage like you mentioned above for which she would need to see a specialist so for now she is on 50mg of Pred and OMG what a change!!! Since last night when I gave her the first dose she has not coughed, retched, coughed up phlegm AT ALL, no mucous from the nose. She has finally has a good night sleep stretched out on her back (her fav position), she was full of energy this morning and I felt like I had my dog back! I don't want to jinx it and speak too early since it's only been one dose, but what a relief to have HER find some relief.

I am suspecting that since it is a immune response to aero allergens if it is in fact EBP that she might has come into contact with something up north at the cottage since we have had the wettest summer I can remember. Tornado warnings, parts of the cities and towns have been flooded, I am thinking that this has caused lots of problems for people dealing with allergies since the soil, trees, grasses etc can't dry out. But obviously I am just guessing.

Thank you so so much for even bringing this to my attention I wish I could send you all the hthings gas in the world lol!!

Just a note of caution. As one who is regularly on prednisone, prednisone "cures what ails you." Not really, but it is a potent, non-specific anti inflammatory. Though your description sounds a lot like Jenn's, the prednisone response is far from diagnostic. I always feel great while on prednisone. Like dying when I come off

I totally understand that's why I'm trying not to get too relieved but the vet said it's its fungal the Pred will initially show signs of improvement then the symptoms will return so I will definitely keep a tight eye on her.

I feel like I've ruled out 1. bacterial more or less because two types of antibiotics didn't relieve ANY of her symptoms, 2. viral should have shows at least SOME signs of improvement over the course of 3 weeks whereas she is getting worse. So I feel like at this point I have either allergies, parasites, or fungal infection to look at. Since she had a 4DX test in April and came clean and she's been on preventative medication since I'm less likely to think it's parasitic. Also since the vet has previously suspected she might have seasonal allergies, I'm leaning most towards that.  But again I definitely understand what you are saying and I would like to take her to see a respirologist

Btw.....I'm betting its either asthma or like Jenn's dog with the eosinophilic thing.