COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Veterinarians have a stark warning for dog owners as we head into the holiday season.
11 News spoke with North Springs Veterinary Referral Center, near Interquest and Voyager, who is seeing a new, nameless respiratory illness among dogs, that can be deadly. Vets have seen all breeds, sizes and ages of dogs with this illness.
“Around October 20th, we saw our first case. It presents as a normal kennel cough would where they’re coughing. But instead of resolving in 7-10 days like a normal kennel cough, typically the cough lasts and lingers and it progresses to a pneumonia,” said owner and CEO Dr. Lindsey Ganzer. “Out of the 35ish cases that we’ve seen in our hospital, there’s been four that have passed away, either from the severity of the disease or because they’re so severe… euthanasia.”
Vets want dog owners to also be aware of the symptoms. If your dog is coughing, vets recommend taking them to your regular vet clinic earlier than you normally would. However, if your dog becomes lethargic, has eye/nose discharge, has a prolonged wet cough, increased breathing or blue/purple gums, vets urge owners to take them to an emergency hospital.
“It’s definitely something that when they wait to come in, it tends to progress and tends to be a lot worse. If they’re seen sooner, and we can get the antibiotics and treatments on sooner, even though the cough is still lingering in a lot of these cases, they’re not progressing,” said Ganzer.
Vets are urging dog owners to avoid high-volume pet locations as we head into the holiday season, like boarding facilities, dog parks, doggy daycares and more. If you can, vets are recommending to get a pet sitter at your home.
“I am concerned only in the fact that it does seem to spread really rapidly and it is now in a lot of different states that we’re getting reports of it,” said Ganzer. “As we figure out more about this, and we do more testing and studies and we figure out what exactly is going on, the hopefully we can find a resolution and we can go back to normal life.”
According to CBS News, Oregon, Colorado and New Hampshire are among the states that have seen cases of the illness.
“Any dog is susceptible. We’ve seen full vaccinated, totally healthy dogs. The ones that tend to be a little more difficult to treat are the ones that are either older, or have some sort of secondary disease process that is underlying, but it really can affect any dog,” said Ganzer.
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