Bordetella, Kennel Cough

[Jeff]

Trudy has a job working at the county animal shelter. In addition to her paycheck she brought home kennel cough....yay!

 

It started with T, him being so old, I though maybe it would be just him, so I gave him benadryl for a week, and he seems fine now.

But today A started coughing, so started her and K on benadryl.

 

My question is this... Once this runs it's course, will they have sufficient antibodies built up for a year, or should I vaccinate them afterwards?

[GreyTzu]

I would. I recall reading here that the vaccine only treats a few of the most common strains, and there are about forty-three eleven'dy strains.

 

I'm sure one of our techs will weigh in.

[krissy]

My question is... why benadryl? Kennel cough isn't an allergy, and it has no cough suppressant activity. At most if they're coughing so much they can't sleep it might help with that a little.

 

My experience is it's extremely variable in terms of individual susceptibility. All 3 of my guys are vaccinated. Summit sticks close to home mostly now with the occasional trip to the dog friendly trails. The girls go to agility trials, dog shows, and (until recently when I changed jobs) to work with me. Kenna had KC twice before she was 10 months old, most likely picked up at a show or agility trial. Kili went to all the same shows and never got it. Summit was exposed to both girls and is old and he never got it either.

 

The vaccine only covers Bordetella which is a bacteria that can cause KC, however there are a number of other bacterias and viruses that can be implicated. The vaccine companies will often pay for a respiratory swab for dogs that have been vaccinated with their product, and if the dog comes back positive for Bordetella they will also cover treatment. So far I haven't had one come back positive for Bordetella; the vaccine works, but it doesn't cover everything.

[Hubcitypam]

Back in the olden days when we pulled dogs out of pounds with kennel cough we let them hack up a lung during the day and gave them Robitussin DM at night so we could all sleep...of course that was when we swabbed cats ears with baby oil to smother the ear mites. Never lost any of them.

 

None of my vets have ever been a big fan of Bordetella vaccine...to a man and woman they've said it works on half the strains at best.

Edited November 4, 2017 by Hubcitypam

[Jeff]

...the vaccine only treats a few of the most common strains, and there are about forty-three eleven'dy strains.

Well I didn't know that...that sucks on so many orders of magnitude!

 

My question is... why benadryl? Kennel cough isn't an allergy, and it has no cough suppressant activity.

We caught the cough very quickly, what that means for the rest of it, I have no idea, but T was not coughing all that much, but enough for us to know it wasn't normal. T's 12+, pretty old for a dobie of his size, it seemed to be kennel cough. Trudy was worried it could be congestive heart failure, but the coughs are different, this seemed kennel coughy.

Benadryl dries up the back hacking (throat clearing) half of the cough, I read it helped, I had it on hand, and it has seemed to work for T and now A. After about 12 hours T would start coughing again, and after another round of Benadryl, it would stop for ~12 hours.

Could have been something different, Trudy handles so many sick dogs, but it sure seemed 99% like a mild case of kennel cough.

[cleptogrey]

watch T carefully. a group of GH came in a couple of years ago w/ kennel cough. my good friend was fostering one before the group knew about the situation, of course it spread like wild fire to her clan of 10. her old man great dane contracted it and it turned into pneumonia- unfortunately he didn't survive. i inoculate for it, but nothing in life is guaranteed these days aside from taxes and death. epidemics can easily turn into pneumonia.