Adelaide’s first illness - our first emergency trip to the vet
Adelaide is a very spry pup and we’ve been enjoying watching her grow to be bigger and stronger every day. While she’s not the world’s biggest eater, she does eat 2-3 meals a day and is not shy about it. When visiting the vet for routine check ups, we are always asked “any vomiting or diarrhea?” and “any change in behaviour?” The answer from us is always, “no”. Adelaide has had a few instances of digestive issues but it can usually be explained by a little too much peanut butter or a few too many hot dog pieces for training. Just a few weeks ago however, we experienced our first run in with both of these warming signs and honestly were quite worried. We’d love to share our story with you in case anything like this happens to you and your pup.
Adelaide started getting really sleepy. We knew something was wrong when she slept away her whole afternoon. Normally, Adelaide would be leaping around playing with toys or eating breakfast and lunch. We didn’t realize it at the time, but Adelaide wasn’t really eating. After a few days of this changed behaviour, we noticed that her spine and ribs were a little more pronounced (iggy’s have such little body fat that even an ounce of weight is quite noticeable). This is when we weighed her. She should have been up a little because her previous weigh-in was 7.0lbs. To our dismay, Adelaide was now only 6.8lbs and still looking noticeably thinner.
Another odd behaviour we noticed was this weird almost vomit-like cough. It was as if she was going to vomit but nothing would come up. Sometimes we could see her vomit something but swallow it back down. She coughed like this during playtime, on walks, and even during the night. We kept thinking she was trying to vomit but just couldn’t seem to vomit anything up.
A few days later she vomited in the morning but that was all. We kept thinking, “when do we bring her to the vet?” We didn’t want to be making a big deal out of nothing, but we also are first time puppy parents and want to do what’s best. We knew that vomiting was a bad sign but it was just the once so far. We decided to wait. Later that night something changed. Adelaide a bad case of diarrhea. The weirdest thing is that since she wasn’t eating very much (maybe only 1 meal a day) so the diarrhea was not solid in any way - just pure liquid. Adelaide was very sluggish, not eating, vomited and now had really bad diarrhea. It was time to take her to the vet.
We made an appointment for the next day and told them the story. We were hoping for clarity and answers but unfortunately it was still a bit of a question mark. Clearly, Adelaide was experiencing issues with her GI tract but there was no fever. Adelaide doesn’t have a history of eating strange objects (she may have put objects in her mouth but she never actually swallows them). Adelaide also had an unusual amount of eye gunk (the little bits of sleep in her eye were actually bigger and more like mucus). With all of this in mind, the vet then asked, “might she have kennel cough?” He said that sometimes these digestive issues could be disguising the root of the problem - kennel cough. Adelaide did not receive the Bordetella vaccine on recommendation from the vet because she had no immediate plans to go to a kennel or day care.
Our vet said that they usually don’t give it in the beginning and often something like kennel cough will sort itself out. With this “hands off” approach, there is a risk that something like kennel cough can turn into something more serious - pneumonia. The vet sent us home with probiotics to help Adelaide’s stomach and eye drops for her mucus/red eyes. The vet suggested that we watch videos online to see if “kennel cough” might be the hacking cough we’ve been hearing.
Scared about the lack of certainty, we brought Adelaide home to rest and started watching videos. While Adelaide didn’t have any mucus when she coughed, the sound was exactly the same as kennel cough. The vet called the next day and we discussed that this way most likely the problem. We kept a careful eye on her and had a few more check ins over the phone with the veterinary office.
The diarrhea was still hit and miss. Sometimes it was pure liquid, sometimes it resembled a solid. The one big difference was that Adelaide started eating again. This was a combo of the probiotics (sprinkled on one of her meals a day) and bone broth from our favourite food company to help soften the food and make it more appetizing. When Adelaide started eating it was a bit of a struggle and she spread her food all across the floor. If we were to guess, we think it was hard for her to chew hard food. The bone broth helped to soften her kibble and she started to eat more and more. The probiotic was like candy to her, she gobbled it up!
Almost 3 weeks have passed since Adelaide was really sick. Her energy and appetite came back about a week after the probiotics but her cough remained. We could hear her cough mostly during playtime and when we took her out for walks. To prevent her mixing with other dogs we were very careful to pick her up when dogs came near. The vet warned us that kennel cough is extremely contagious, much like a human cold. We think that Adelaide picked it up from an off leash dog park because her symptoms started soon after we attended a small event at a dog park. Adelaide’s cough stopped around a week ago, so we are nervous but should be ready soon to mingle again.
Throughout the process we had many people reaching out through our online communities and we are thankful for all of the advice and support we received. We are by no means experts on dog health but we tried our very best to listen to the experts we had surrounding us and take as much advice as we could.