Cough Dog

[madrobins]

When you have a small sick child, many pediatricians have a separate waiting room for you so that (quite sensibly) your small sick child does not infect the other, weller children in the office. So I probably should not have been surprised to find that Emily, who has a dry, hacking cough, was invited to enter the Vet's office through a side door so as not to infect the other, weller dogs in the office. She has kennel cough, a malady I had never heard of until recently; it appears to be the dog version of the common cold--viral or bacterial, it results in a cough, perhaps a fever. In most cases the dog gets over it in a few days, although we were given some doggie cough suppressant in case she has trouble sleeping because of the cough (so far she has been sleeping and eating just fine). The other complicating this is that the wretched dog can't go to the dog park until she's over this, as kennel cough is as contagious as, well, the common cold. As we left the Vet's office (via the quarrantine door) they were sponging down her examination room, so as not to infect the next animal in the room.