[dab10545]

I have a wonderful puppy that I got one week ago today. He started a hacking cough a couple of days ago and we started Clavamox immediately. Today, I took him to vet because while his cough hadn't worsened, it seemed as if he was having problems breathing. He has had NO loose stools, eats like a horse, and drinks his water. He's also had no eye discharge whatsoever and the only other thing he has is a runny nose. He received a shot today of stronger antibiotics and slept most of the day. This evening, his breathing is better, he's playing . . . does this sound like distemper?

[Daveyo]

No I do not think your dog has distemper. Sounds more like either kennel cough or Pneumonia. Do not get the dog wet. Take to vet and have a blood test done and also a urine test done. One fast way to check for pneumonia is have the dog stand up and tap a couple of times a bit hard on the side of the rib cage area. If the dog coughs after the tap then the dog has pneumonia. Very easy to tell. If not then the dog has some other disease or infection. Write back and let me know.

[dab10545]

I will definitely try that. He's getting better and better, but still has a runny nose and a bit of a cough. We're giving him his medicine like clockwork and I just keep watching him. He was twitching in his sleep the other day and I almost lost it until I got on the internet and found out this was completely normal! Whew...this dog is wearing me out but he's the best puppy I've ever encountered. He's so d*** smart and he's so d*** good! He chews on nothing but his toys, I can leave him by hisself while I go in the other room and he just plays with his toys and behaves so well. He doesn't bark or whine and is just happy to see us....look at me...I'm just rambling on. Anyway, thank you so much for the post and I'll try what you said and let you know.

[Daveyo]

Sounds good to me. Cause if your dog had distemper he will not be playing with his toys, or wanting to eat much or even drink besides having soupy stools, and running a good fever of 102 deg F to 106 deg F

Also the dog will go into withdrawal and try to hide his sickness from you.

I know distemper when i see one

Anyway tonight i had the cerebral spinal tap done and injected the NDV into 2 of my dogs that has suspected distemper antibodies in the brain fluid. They are recovering nicely tonight and I am much relieved now that it is done. Both now are on the road to recovery and the Distemper antibodies should be gone for good after 12 hours. In 24 hours from now they will be well protected against any further attacks of the disease.

They already recovered from the initial bout of the disease in September. Had to wait to see for any secondary signs of it breaching the blood brain barrier. Out of the 3 remaining survivors 2 of them had the breach. The third one i believe i caught it in the 4-6 day window, so he should be ok. He has the highest wbc count of 17.9 which is very good.

Toni had only 4.7 wbc and she died 2 weeks ago. She had the weakest protection out of the 4 survivors initially. Did not have enough time or finding a vet to do the job to save her life. I still cry to this day but I know she with Dino the first dog who died. Brother and sister together. They will be with me to the end of my days here on this planet.

So at least my efforts I now know I saved the 2 dogs and they should have a good long life with me now.

Keep watching your dog and check him twice a day. Even if for a few minutes, give your dog a good looking over feel their body etc if warm or cold etc, and check for ticks or other problems etc and it takes only 5 minutes. That check can possibly save your dogs life as well. It will make all the difference in the world.

So, let me know how it all turns out.

Good luck.

[dab10545]

Thanks so much for your reply. I will try what you suggested in your earlier post and get back to you asap. I just love this little puppy so much, not to mention our family dog of nine years just up and died suddenly a week and a half ago. Apparant heart attack. It was totally out of the blue. Then we got him and he mended our broken hearts and he's just wonderful. I'm closely monitoring him and giving him his meds. Let you know soon!

[Daveyo]

Dab, I am waiting to hear from you. Please give me the latest report on your dog and check for any other symptoms of this disease and include this on your report. Most important. Also read up on my latest posts under the topic of Distemper.

I am wondering myself here.

[dab10545]

My puppy is doing AWESOME!!! He's coughing less and less and he's just a happy puppy. When he does cough it's very moist and productive sounding. He hardly coughs anymore and when he does it's usually after playing and running outside. I still find myself watching him very closely. One of his ears was standing up a little more than the other and I found myself freaking a bit, but within a few days, the other one started standing up like the other so I'm definintely better about it. Thanks so much for your replies and suggestions. I thing (fingers crossed) that we are emerging from the woods and the sun is shining and the field is full of flowers! THANKS!!

[Daveyo]

Good to hear. The coughing of your dog is still nagging me a bit here. It sure sounds like he or she has an upper respiratory infection still ongoing and inside the lungs. Keep giving antibiotics specifically made for the upper respiratory area. Ask your Vet for this specific antibiotics.

You should get an x-ray of your dogs lungs to see if anything is showing up. Also watch your dog if is coughs up any mucus however little it may be. An exam of this culture can pin point the illness thru some tests.

Adenovirus (Cav 2) also known as cold and flu viruses also cause this besides Kennel cough. Humans get it too. Upper respiratory infections. I dislike it because it is indeed hard to shake it off.

With so many viruses out there it is hard to specifically say which is causing which to each dog, because every dog has different symptoms.

I wish they can talk to us somehow, but cannot be. However my dog Tiger started recently mooing at me like a cow one evening, and she never been to a farm in her life. I turned my head so fast cause I thought there was a cow in my room. Nope it came from her and boy did I have a good laugh. Her eyes so buggy and big and she going nutty wanting to be on my lap. She does in fact talk to me based on certain sounds she makes to me and I have learned her language to some extent. Like me when I say something she knows precisely what I am talking about and I can see her eyes very intent on me. We do communicate one way or another.

Anyway keep letting me know what's going on. OK.

[dab10545]

The cough is much better, but yes...it's still there. It's really sounding productive, though. When he coughs up the flem, should I just put it on a Kleenex or something else? His breathing is much better. I think he's noticing that, too, because he's really running and playing when he goes outside alot more then he had been. I've got to take him out on the leash now because he likes to make me chase him and at 3:30 in the morning when I'm trying to get to work....well, that's not a good thing! :)

Thank you so very much for all your replies!!! I'm just bowled over by you actually answering, first of all, and how pleasant and informative you are!! I hope you had a really good Thanksgiving and that your holidays are full of joy and happiness. Our animals are better because of people like you.

[Daveyo]

If your able to do so, put the phlem in a zip loc bag or a plastic bag that they use for sandwiches. Seal it and then take it to the VET and tell him to analyze it and find out what disease or virus the dog is suffering from. Once your VET gets the results, then your on the right track in finding out exactly the problem and then you can get the right meds to treat your dog.

A lot of times it is very difficult to pin point the specific problem unless you bring in the sample and give the VET a chance to get it analyzed. Example there are 52 different virus possibilities causing an upper respiratory problems in humans. So what they do is give several meds that take the most viruses out of the picture. If those meds don't work then they go to the next set of drugs that handle the remaining viruses Like a hit or miss.

Same for dogs as well.

You know a group of doctors over 30 years ago actually figured out the cure for Canine Distemper. Problem is getting it into the journals, because two out of the three most prominent doctor researchers died suddenly taking all to their graves. That left only one Doctor who happens to be my VET for my dogs who is the last one that knew this all these years and he has saved so many over 600 dogs. Heaven only knows how many times he has tried, and hopefully now maybe perhaps this will come true since we are so very close to having some specific answers regarding this disease which is the same in human MS.

Just for example it costs over 2 million dollars just to do one research of antibody. Getting the funds is very difficult. If possible just to build a research lab that is specific for animals dogs and cats similar to the research lab at Mayo Clinic, will cost over 3.5 million dollars.

Picture this for a moment. If we were able to genectically make stem cells, (which by the way happened just over a week ago in Japan) we will be able to fix just about anything that got damaged in any dog or cat, let alone be able to do the same for humans as well, like those who had a major heart attack and in most cases (heart attacks do damage heart tissues very badly) this genetic stem cell will be able to repair it and restore the heart back even better that it was before the heart attack. Imagine everything in our bodies getting repaired over and over again.

We could live a thousand years!!!! Talk about living a long life. The only thing that will stop us is some catastrophe causing sudden death, like an auto accident, or some disease killing us faster than we can save ourselves such as Ebola and Hantavirus etc.

Sure I would love to live a long life but not so sure to want to live a thousand years. To me that is a very long time. So if that happens then maybe we can then decide for ourselves when we feel we have lived long enough and take our exit at our own choice.

Then again, food supply problems will come about, water problems will come about, the population will keep growing at an astronomical pace forcing the Governments around the world to force us to die to control the explosion of people, or curtail births so low it will be unbelievable, and Death notices will be just a trickle per day and so on and so forth.

The problems will become so acute and critical, that a person today is a Senior Citizen at age 65 vs a person becoming a Senior citizen at age 800, assuming that they put the cut off at age 1,000.

It has been the desire of the rich to want to live as long as possible because of all the money that they make from their so called businesses. The rich will want to become immortal beings. Eventually sooner or later you might have the opportunity to see maybe 100 generations of your blood line below you, and they will call you Ancient Uncle Tom!!!!!!!!!

Enough said get the test done and put it in some plastic bag.