Coughing in Dogs: Kennel Cough, Heart or Worms?

Coughing is one of those signs that means almost nothing on its own and a great deal in context. The same dry hack can be a harmless infection running its course, or the first outward sign of a heart that is beginning to fail.

What sorts them out is rarely the sound. It is the timing, the dog's age, and what else is happening alongside it. Those three things are also what a vet will ask about first, so it is worth paying attention before the appointment.

Kennel cough

The most common cause in an otherwise well dog, and the one that sounds worst relative to how serious it is.

• The sound: a harsh, dry, honking cough, often ending in a retch or a gag that owners mistake for vomiting or for something stuck in the throat
• The timing: worse with excitement, exercise and pressure on the collar
• The context: usually three to ten days after contact with other dogs. Boarding, grooming, training class, a park, a clinic waiting room
• The dog: otherwise bright, eating, and behaving normally, which is the important part

In a healthy adult dog it typically runs one to three weeks and often needs nothing beyond rest, a harness instead of a collar, and avoiding other dogs. It matters more in puppies, elderly dogs, flat-faced breeds and anything with existing heart or airway disease, where it can progress to pneumonia.

See a vet if the dog becomes lethargic or goes off its food, if there is coloured nasal discharge, if breathing becomes laboured, or if it has not begun improving within a week.

Heart disease

This is the one worth knowing about, because it is commonly mistaken for a chest infection and treated as one for weeks.

• The sound: a soft, moist cough, sometimes described as the dog trying to clear its throat
• The timing: at night or in the early morning, or after lying down. This is the single most useful distinguishing feature
• The context: a middle-aged or older dog, small breeds particularly, often with reduced stamina that has crept up over months
• What comes with it: tiring on walks, faster resting breathing, reluctance to exercise, sometimes a swollen abdomen, sometimes fainting

A cough that is worse at night in an older dog should be investigated as a heart problem until proven otherwise. Antibiotics will not touch it, and a course of them buys nothing but delay.

One genuinely useful thing you can do at home is count your dog's breaths while it is asleep. Count chest movements for thirty seconds and double it. A settled sleeping dog should sit comfortably under about thirty breaths a minute, and a rising trend over days is one of the earliest signs of fluid on the lungs. It is a number vets take seriously.

Worms in the lungs

Two quite different things get called worms here, and both cause coughing.

Migrating roundworm larvae pass through the lungs as part of their life cycle, which is why puppies with a heavy burden cough. It comes with the rest of the picture: pot belly, dull coat, poor growth, sometimes worms in stool or vomit. It resolves with proper deworming.

Heartworm is a different and more serious matter. Transmitted by mosquitoes, adult worms live in the heart and the vessels of the lungs. The cough is chronic, exercise tolerance falls away, and in advanced cases there is weight loss and a swollen abdomen.

Heartworm develops slowly and does real structural damage before it is obvious. It is diagnosed on a blood test, treatment is prolonged and carries genuine risk, and prevention is a simple monthly or injectable product. That gap between the cost of prevention and the cost of treatment is about as wide as it gets in veterinary medicine.

Important: never start a heartworm preventive in a dog that has not been tested, if it has been off prevention. Killing a large number of circulating larvae at once can cause a severe reaction.

Collapsing trachea

Common in small breeds, and immediately recognisable once you have heard it.

• The sound: a dry, unmistakable honk, often compared to a goose
• The timing: triggered by excitement, drinking, pulling on a collar, or heat
• The dog: a small breed, often middle-aged, often overweight

The windpipe's cartilage rings soften and flatten. It is managed rather than cured, and the two interventions that help most are weight loss and switching permanently from a collar to a harness. Both are free.

Something stuck

Sudden, violent coughing in a dog that was completely fine a minute ago, often with gagging, pawing at the mouth or distress. Grass seeds, bone fragments, sticks and pieces of toy are the usual culprits.

This needs seeing the same day. A grass seed inhaled into an airway will not come out on its own and causes a persistent infection that antibiotics keep half-controlling and never clear.

The rest of the list

• Pneumonia, with a wet cough, fever, lethargy and fast breathing. An unwell dog rather than a coughing one
• Distemper in unvaccinated dogs, where cough comes with eye and nose discharge and then neurological signs
• Dust and irritants, particularly through harmattan, or smoke and cleaning products indoors
• Allergic airway disease, which is seasonal and comes with other allergy signs
• Chest masses in older dogs, where the cough is persistent and gradually worsening with weight loss

Go the same day if

• Breathing is laboured, or the dog is using its abdomen to breathe
• Gums are pale, blue or grey
• The dog cannot settle or will not lie down
• There is blood in what is coughed up
• The cough started suddenly and violently, suggesting something inhaled
• The dog has collapsed or fainted
• It is a young puppy or an unvaccinated dog
• The dog is lethargic or off its food alongside the cough

What to bring to the appointment

Two things are worth more than any description you can give in the room. A phone video of the cough, because most dogs stubbornly refuse to cough at the clinic, and a sleeping breathing rate counted over a few days. Add when it started, whether it is worse at night or with exercise, any contact with other dogs, and what deworming and vaccination the dog has had.

What not to do

• Do not give human cough medicine. Several contain ingredients dangerous to dogs, and suppressing a cough that is clearing an infection is unhelpful anyway
• Do not assume every cough needs antibiotics. Most kennel cough does not, and heart disease certainly does not
• Do not keep exercising a coughing dog in the hope of loosening it
• Do not use a collar on any coughing dog. A harness immediately reduces the trigger

Coughs get treated blind more than almost any other sign, because the cheap path is a course of antibiotics and the informative path is a chest X-ray and a heart scan. That is a real difference in cost, and it is why so many dogs with early heart disease spend two or three months on antibiotics that could not possibly have helped.

Consultations and the diagnostic imaging that tells a cough apart are covered on Skeepy Pet HMO plans at any vet clinic in Nigeria, which means the answer can come from a picture of the chest rather than from a guess and a fortnight of waiting.