Coughing older dog.

Dr. Marie replied:

I'm sorry to hear that Parker may be having some problems. I am not going to have an exact answer for you on this question but I can give you my thoughts.

There are many possible causes for a cough in an older dog and often the cause can be difficult to diagnose. Usually, if there is a heart problem that is causing the cough there will be a murmur and also signs of heart enlargement on chest xrays. Sometimes interpretation of these xrays can be difficult. In some cases, if a dog sounds like he could have heart disease, but I am not sure, I may send xrays to a radiologist to get their opinion.

Has Parker been tested for heartworm? This is a possibility as well.

It's also possible that there is some type of allergic disease going on. This can be hard to diagnose. A trial of some steroid medication may possibly make a difference. However, you would want to be sure that there is no infectious disease before this is taken on.

Haziness in the lungs can be a sign of fluid. Heart disease is one possibility for fluid in the lungs but there are other possibilities such as certain types of cancers. These can be hard to diagnose though.

Another test that possibly may help is to have an ultrasound (echocardiogram) done. This can tell you much more about how well the heart is functioning and possibly can tell you if there is fluid present. You may also want to ask your vet about a BNP test which is a blood test that can sometimes give us more hints as to whether heart disease is present.

If nothing obvious comes up on these tests then you may need to wait for a few weeks and then take more xrays to see if something obvious appears at this time.

There are many other possible causes of a cough such as a fungal infection, a foreign object and other things but these are nowhere near as common.

I hope that has helped somewhat. Please let me know if you have more questions.

Dr. Marie.


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Dr. Marie replied:

There are many different tests as there are many different possibilities. Testing for each one probably would not make sense at this point. I would likely do the radiology referral +/- the ultrasound first. If the radiologist things there could be evidence of a fungal disease, then your vet will know what kind of tests to run...but I must repeat that these are unlikely.

Also, if this is a heart problem there are many possibly reasons as to why. Age related factors certainly are possible.