How to Diagnose a Coughing Dog

Video Transcript

"Let's talk about how to diagnose a coughing dog. Your veterinarian is the one who needs to actually diagnose why the dog is coughing. Coughing is a symptom of many different types of diseases or processes that a dog can have. Some of these are mild and benign and some of them can be quite severe and so always if you have a coughing dog check with your veterinary clinic first. Let them find out what is going on. Now at home if a dog is coughing there are different types of coughs that we can see or hear. One would be the wet wheezing type of cough and two would be the dry honking cough. Now dry honking coughs are usually upper airway coughs and wheezing types of wet coughs are typically lower. Now we see lots of different types of things that cause coughing such as allergies, infections like kennel cough and heart disease like congestive heart failure, all can be different forms that manifest a cough. It is always good to be safe to take your dog in to a veterinary clinic to find out what is going on. We use our stethoscope to listen to the lungs and heart to find out if there are any crackles in the chest or rails or anything like that that are unusual instead of a normal lung sound to help us diagnose why a cough could be there. Is it lower in the lungs or is it upper in the trachea?"