There appears to be a small outbreak of Canine Cough around the Barrack Heights area at the moment. In some of the cases, the pet’s vaccine was accidently overdue whilst the dogs still attended Doggy Day Care.
Be alert to coughing signs in your dog and regardless, check your pet’s vaccine is current.
The canine cough, CC, vaccines are not like Parvo vaccines, the CC vaccines are just like the human Whooping Cough vaccines -they don’t stop you getting the illness, they just stop you getting the more severe forms of it. However, if the herd immunity drops, such as in a doggy day care where several dogs might have lapsed vaccination for this respiratory vaccine, bigger outbreak and more severe illness can occcur.
It is a timely reminder for any Doggy Day Care to be checking the vaccine status of all attendees on an on-going monthly basis, so that overdue pets are identified early.
If your dog is coughing, please ensure your vet clinic knows this before you arrive. Our clients have alerted us to this so we can up the PPE we wear and also keep the infectious dogs outside still in their car etc, The upside of COVID is everyone is being cautious about infection so this outbreak should be contained faster than normal.
Whatever you do, DO NOT PUT A MASK ON YOUR PET. It is downright dangerous and very distressing for your pet. To do so is downright dangerous and very distressing for the pets. It is not cute, nor funny, a mask is just not acceptable ever on a pet, even for a photograph.