You know it's bad when..

[jackiegirl]

We have been having an issue with our dog Oscar since December. He's sneezes and coughs whenever he gets super excited, and sometimes for no reason at all. We've had antibiotics for kennel cough and two rounds for pneumonia. We also tried Benadryl for allergies. Nothing worked. The only thing left that anyone could think of was some sort of fungal infection. So finally, we had the vet sedate him and take a culture from waaaaay back in his throat and it was sent off to the Michigan State University Vet Clinic. Got the results today...nothing! They can't find anything wrong with him. So now our options are to try another round of medication, which only works in the short term, a rhinoscopy which may or may not tell us anything. Anyone have anything similar to this?

[justaname]

Heh the idiopathic coughing. Cross my fingers but I *think* we just got rid of this with my dog. We tried antibiotics, antihelminths (in case of lungworms-very rare) and what may have done the trick: a long course of steroids (temeril-P) which was MISERABLE but knock on wood it seems to have worked. The steroids made him rediculously thirsty and I eventually had to ration his water because he was drinking so much he literally couldn't hold it and we had several peesplosions.

[jackiegirl]

The vet did mention a low dose steroid. He was on one back in January when we thought we were dealing with pneumonia and it did get better. Hmmm, maybe we'll try that first before another procedure. Less invasive and not as costly. Thank you for sharing!

[kellbell191]

What type of dog is he? Reverse sneezing when excited is pretty common in short nose dogs. I think covering their nose to help them breathe through their mouths helps.

We had this issue with our beagle/bassett and had to try multiple allergy medications until it was resolved. He takes one zyrtec a day and almost never coughs, on benadryl he would reverse sneeze for hours it doesn't do much for allergies, and even on hydroxyzine would reverse sneeze for 10-15 minutes a day. Now he does it for maybe 5 minutes once every 2-3 weeks.