Bleh. Not the most awesome day.
A few days ago, Nesmith, one of my dogs, started coughing more than usual. He has a stage 4/6 mitral heart murmur and (we think) it's been making him cough for quite some time. A few days ago, it seemed to me that his coughing had increased in frequency and the pitch has also increased. He sounds squeaky. He's been having these coughing fits mostly at night and they seem last up to 5-10 minutes, after which he exhibit some rapid, somewhat hard breathing Last night, he did it so frequently I couldn't sleep and I couldn't go get him because he was hiding.
Today, mum and I brought him to the vet and saw Dr. D, who gave him a pretty thorough workup. He listened to his chest, took some blood, took rads, etc. He was thinking Nemma was maybe starting to go into congestive heart failure but the chest rads didn't really show signs of that. There could be a little fluid around his heart but we weren't sure, because it could also be a normal aging pattern for a dog Nesmith's age. We already knew his left atrium was enlarged and the x-ray showed that it was pressing up on Nesmith's trachea but we don't know if it would make him cough more or this suddenly unless the atria got more enlarged, but we'd probably need an ultrasound to determine that. Dr. D wasn't really sure what to do but he put Nesmith on a diuretic for a few days to see if it it improves his cough on the chance that there a small amount of fluid in his lungs that we couldn't see on the rads.
If it doesn't do anything....I dunno what we do next. I'm really uncomfortable with how rapidly he's breathing at rest (and I'm sure he is too!). I don't know what else they can do at my clinic. But I don't know if I want to bring him to school because it will be so stressful for Nemma and likely quite expensive. But they have board certified specialists and maybe Medicine or Cardio would be able to find something out? Poor Nesmith.
I'm done for the day. And worried about my little dog :(
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