Pneumonia advice

Hi,

My parent's dog Chuck has been coughing for a long time, it's a wheezing, gagging cough, and it's been getting worse. He went to the vet and had a course of antibiotics, and the vet said it was Canine Parainfluenza KC. It's been going on about 6 weeks now, and very recently he's gotten very bad indeed, and he went back to the vet today. As I suspected, he has pneumonia, and it's only in early stages thank heavens, but I know how dangerous it can be he's had a steroid, baytril and he may have had a bronchodilator as well. He's going back for more of the same tomorrow - but is there anything more we can do? Can anyone offer any advice?

xx

Just want to say that I know how worrying this must be for you all. I am sure that someone knowledgeable will be along soon with some good advice, and in the meantime the only thing that I can think of is to make sure that the dog is well wrapped up whenever he he goes out.

Even if you don't have a coat for him, a homemade woolly jumper will do fine - use it whenever he needs to go out, no matter for how short a time. Make sure that where he sleeps at night is fully heated too.

Hope he gets better quickly.

Thanks - the whole jumper thing was my initial thought too - and we're going to try and make him something tonight. He's getting on bless him - he's 11 now, and we're all rather worried about him

xx

I do hope that the drugs from the vet kick in soon and ease his problems.

I will keep my fingers crossed for him.

My sisters dog had kennel cough that turned into pnumonia.
Though by the time she & her fella got the dog to a vet she'd had it for a while. (rescue dog) So the dog was put on two or three different pills, & had to take them every day. A year or so later my sister has been able to reduce the meds & the last I heard she was just giving one pill a week as maintainance.

There is light at the end of the tunnel/Things will get easier.

Will have to ask her to make herself a member of this site so she can give you the propper facts.

I'm so sorry to hear about your sister's dog, I hope he recovers well. Was he vaccinnated, because the DHPPI covers this? One of those "P's" there is for parainfluenza, I know that coz of all the research I did on jabs last year. Goood luck with him, I hoope he pulls through.

He's been vaccinated and had regular boosters - what is the DHPPI? I know that in many cases KC vaccines don't actually work that well - and of course, there's a chance that it's a different strain and not actually parainfluenza. There were no tests done as far as I'm aware.

He's been back to the vet yesterday who said there was an improvement - and he's due back again in an hour and a half. He seems to have been worse again last night and this morning

Shani - if you can give us any more info on the pills that helped I would be so grateful - at the moment he's just having jabs which stress him out so much

xx

That's the Nobivac vaccine it's either the DHPPI or DHPPIL and each letter stands for one of the diseases in the vacccination, i.e. the D is Distemper, the H Hepatitis P is Parvo, the other one being that Parainfluenza, the "I" I can't remember unless it goes with the P for the parainfluenza, and then of course the L for Lepto which isn't always there if you don't want the Lepto bit.

It's quite scarey that this dog was vaccinated and has had its annual boosters I do hope he makes a good recovery and quickly too.

My sisters computer is not working, so will have to wait untill she's off work & ring her for the info.

Can anyone offer any more advice on this?

Update so far - Chuck has been going to the vet having steroid and baytril jab (possibly a bronchodilator too) - but vet discontinued this because he said the baytril can't be given for more than 5 days I know we often treat with it for several weeks with the rats...

Since he was taken off those jabs, he's been on tablet form steroid (not sure what sort) and antibiotics, but he seems to have gone downhill again I reckon he should have continued what was working... any thoughts?

xx