Kennel Cough or Something More? The Challenge of Diagnosing and Treating Unknown Infections

This episode tackles the perplexing challenge of an unknown upper respiratory infection plaguing dogs. Delving into the risks, symptoms, and the absence of a definitive test, we shed light on the complexities faced by both pet owners and veterinarians. Stay tuned for insights into navigating this uncharted territory of canine health. 

What You’ll Learn:

  • Explore the current challenges faced by pet owners and veterinarians due to an unidentified upper respiratory infection in dogs

  • Learn about the symptoms of the mysterious illness and potential risks associated with it

  • Delve into the lack of diagnostic tools, the absence of definitive tests, and the difficulties in identifying and isolating affected dogs

  • Discuss the ethical questions surrounding pet care, including decisions related to boarding, grooming, and daycare for dogs with potential symptoms

  • Draw parallels between the risks pet owners face with their dogs and the decisions individuals make regarding their health during cold and flu seasons

  • Understand the self-limiting nature of kennel cough and explore potential home care measures, including the use of humidifiers and steam therapy

  • Review the current statistics on reported cases and stay informed about upcoming updates, tests, and research related to the unidentified upper respiratory infection

Ideas Worth Sharing:

  • "We are seeing an uptick in patients who are having kennel cough-like symptoms." - Dr. Tyler Sugerman

  • "We don't know what this is. We don't know if it's a virus or bacteria. We don't have a test for it." - Dr. Tyler Sugerman

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Read The Transcript:

Dr. Sugerman: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. So today I was supposed to be talking about hypothermia, but I've gotten so many questions about this new air quotes, new respiratory pathogen and dogs that I feel like I just needed to address that first before doing hypothermia. So we're going to save hypothermia for another day.

So listen in as we break down what we know so far about this outbreak affecting our canine friends and also what we don't know about it.

Hi, and welcome to Vetsplanation. I'm your veterinary host, Dr. Sugerman, and I'm going to teach you about veterinary medicine. In this podcast, we can dive deeper into the understanding of what our pets are going through and break down medical terms into easier to understand chunks of information. Just a quick disclaimer, this podcast is for informational purposes only.

This is not meant to be a diagnosis for your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or treatment options, [00:01:00] please talk to your veterinarian about those things. Remember, we are all practicing veterinary medicine and medicine is not an exact science. Your veterinarian may have different treatment options and different opinions.

The information I provide here is to help pet parents have a better understanding about their pets. If you like our podcast, please consider sharing this podcast with at least one friend or just somebody else who has pets as well. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.

Welcome back to Vetsplanation. I'm your host, Dr. Sugerman. So we've heard this on the news, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, from your second cousins, from your neighbors, right?

About this new disease that's affecting dogs. It's some sort of upper respiratory tract infection or pneumonia. You've heard it as one of those. That's not, a hundred percent true. So here's what happened. There was an increase in number of dogs that were having coughs for longer than normal or pneumonia that they weren't necessarily having before.

Or some [00:02:00] dogs that were progressing very quickly from a cough to pneumonia and unfortunately passing away over these last couple of months. So now if you've listened to my kennel cough episode, which you can go back and listen to, I do suggest listening to that. I feel like a broken record sometimes.

I'm sorry, but. Yeah, a lot of these diseases overlap each other, but you can go back to listen to that. I'm going to give you a little bit of a brief overview of what that was, though. So there's this group of diseases collectively known as kennel cough. It's basically an upper respiratory tract infection, which means that it's anything that affects stuff above the lungs.

So any part of your respiratory tract that's above the lungs, the medical term for this is we call it the canine infectious respiratory disease complex, but kennel cough is just the layman's term for it. So we typically don't know what causes it. There are a number of bacteria and viruses that can cause kennel cough or this upper respiratory tract disease.

Like I said, [00:03:00] we typically don't know which one it is when we diagnose this. We usually just go off of that dog's like symptoms. So typically they'll have some sort of dry hacking cough. They may have a runny nose or congested nose, or maybe even watery eyes. They might appear as though they're trying to vomit, but they just come up with all of this white foam instead.

Some people only see them attempting to vomit this white foam and not really that coughing part though. So I will say there's a huge differential that we do have to worry about called GDV or a gastric dilation and volvulus, which I will cover in a different podcast. The big difference between the dogs who have GDV is that their stomachs will start to become really distended or appear bloated in their abdomen.

They'll be lethargic, meaning they don't really want to move around or get up, or they'll be pacing a lot because their stomach really hurts. They'll also not want to eat anything or drink anything, including like getting treats and stuff. This is very sudden when that happens for [00:04:00] GDV versus dogs that have kennel cough.

They'll actually usually be their normal selves. People will say that besides the fact that they're doing this terrible hacking cough, that they seem very normal. They're eating normally. They're drinking normally. They're not having this bloated abdomen. They're playing mostly as normal. So they seem pretty normal.

The other thing that we kind of use to distinguish whether this is possibly an upper respiratory tract infection or this kennel cough, essentially, is their exposure to other dogs. So typically just them being around other dogs, them going to boarding, daycare, grooming, dog parks.

All of those can definitely have them spread this from 1 to another. But also it can be from things like wildlife. So there's lots of wildlife that get these type of upper respiratory diseases as well. So it's not just dogs who are exposed to other dogs. It could be just in your own backyard as well.

But when we hear that they've been in boarding or they've been in a place where they get exposure to a lot of dogs, dog parks, [00:05:00] things like that, then we think more that this is going to be a kennel cough type situation.

It's even going to be, when I talk about wildlife having it, it can even be from like other dogs just on a walk. So let's say if a dog goes out and sniffs, goes to a rock. Coughs on that rock, walks away with its pet parent, then your dog goes up, sniffs that same rock within five minutes, and then your dog can get this kennel cough as well. These bacteria and these viruses, they are spread through what's called aerolization, meaning that they spread through like these tiny little droplets that the dog like coughs or sneezes out and then it's in the air and it can be easily spread to the next dog.

So if anyone is thinking like this sounds a lot like humans who have colds. You are exactly right. So this is very similar to that, right? So if my daughter has a cold because she's sick all the time, she goes and she coughs on her hand and she walks over to the doorknob, turns the [00:06:00] doorknob, walks away.

Then the next kid who's in that class goes over, puts their hand on the doorknob, puts their hand on their face, cause kids always do that. Right? And then walks away. Like they are going to instantly be infected with that cold as well. So it's the same kind of principle. You know we don't always know that our kid has a cold when they go to school. They cough on something, spread it to the next kid. And then they come home and they just want to snuggle with us and give us hugs and kisses. Right? And then we get the colds then as well.

So same thing with our dogs. They get exposed through other dogs and then bring it back to their family then their family meaning other dogs in the house

And just like with a cold a cold is a generic name for an upper respiratory tract infection. There are lots of different viruses and bacteria that cause those as well so it's not necessarily like a cold is not like a specific thing there are lots of things that can cause that.

Okay, so let's get back to this unknown[00:07:00] respiratory tract infection. Here's the thing Everything about it is unknown. So I don't have a ton of information for you. Hear me out here. So we don't know if this is like a bacteria or a virus that's causing it or even both a bacteria and virus.

We just have no idea. We don't know if it's something that has always been around or if it's actually a new type of virus or bacteria. When a pet comes in with kennel cough, not many people do testing on exactly what type of bacteria or virus it is. The reason why is because when I send out this test, this upper respiratory panel, it takes about five to seven days for that to come back with results.

But I've already probably started to treat the dog by the time that has already come back. And if it's a virus, there's probably not a lot that I'm going to change. It's usually just doing the same medications that I would have from before. Because in order to treat with a antibiotic, you have to treat a bacteria.

[00:08:00] Antibiotics are only to treat bacteria. They won't treat anything that's a virus unfortunately. So nobody medication is going to get rid of the virus. Really? It's just your own body that gets rid of a virus.

With that being said, not a lot of people send out testing in the 1st place. So we don't know 100 percent know. And then when we do send out testing, there are tons of different types of things that cause kennel cough, both viruses and bacteria. And they're not all listed on those upper respiratory panels, so it may not be something that we would get a positive for anyways.

So with this new possible upper respiratory tract infection, there has been an increase in dogs that have had a cough that's lasted longer than normal. I'd say a normal kennel cough lasts about two to three weeks of coughing, versus some of these are lasting about six to eight ish weeks of coughing.

We've also seen a larger number of dogs that get pneumonia with kennel cough. And it's still absolutely possible with any of the viruses or bacteria that do normally cause [00:09:00] kennel cough . Any of them can turn into pneumonia. And so I usually ask people to monitor for signs of being lethargic, so not really wanting to do much, or not wanting to eat as this first signs of pneumonia.

And then also looking for any signs of trouble breathing or breathing just really fast. Those are things that tell me that, that. That dog does need to get in because it possibly has pneumonia at that point, and we need to take x rays or radiographs is the technical name for them. To see if that pet does have pneumonia.

With this possible unknown disease, they are seeing more patients that turn from just coughing to pneumonia and some of them, unfortunately, that pass away from a severe illness like very quickly.

I've definitely seen that happen before in dogs, not just when this unknown respiratory virus has occurred. And there's no way to know if those dogs normally had a kennel cough virus or pathogen that we had known of from before. We just know that they had unfortunately passed [00:10:00] away very quickly.

So far there's been Colorado, Oregon, Rhode Island, Florida, New Hampshire, starting in about September that have said that they've had this potential increase in upper respiratory pathogens and again, this is just like an uptick of patients with worsening signs that we would normally see.

If there is a disease, this could be all over the US at this point. We just don't know it. At this point, or this could be just that we're being very hyper vigilant because for the last few years, there's not really a lot of people who were going away on vacation. So dogs weren't really being boarded as much.

People were staying home so they weren't in daycares as much. And then when kids went back to school, people started going back to school, we had more illnesses. Think about the kids who were exposed to those same illnesses that they would have been had they been going to school. And now they get a lot more of them because they're all being inundated at one time after being [00:11:00] in isolation for so long.

So we see that same thing with dogs. Now they're starting to be boarded more. They're starting to go to dog parks more. And so this illness that they potentially would have been exposed to before they weren't really exposed to and now we may have been just seeing a lot of the uptick of them because of that.

There's also other factors to consider as far as were the dogs being properly vaccinated? Because a lot of times this last couple of years, people weren't able to get into vets. So they weren't able to get in on time. They won't be able to get their vaccines in time or. they said my dog isn't being exposed to anything because we're not going to dog parks, we're not going to daycares and stuff, so they weren't really getting them vaccinated. And now we're restarting that process again, or also we also have a lot of people who have been going to feed stores to get the vaccines, but if they're not handled properly and given properly, then they're not going to help unfortunately.

Also, people are starting to go to dog parks more now than they were before in the [00:12:00] last couple of years, because more people are socializing. So now more dogs are socializing, which means we have more interactions than we had been having in the past few years. So we just don't really know, again is this an uptick because of everything that's happened in the past couple of years?

Or is this actually a new virus or bacteria that we're finding? 1 Of the questions that I get asked a lot is how can we test our dog to see if it has this unknown virus? We can't test them because we don't know what it is, right? There's no way to test them for something we don't know.

We don't know if it's a virus. We don't know if it's a bacteria. We don't know if it's both at this point. There are labs like Colorado State University who are working on trying to figure out if this is actually a new virus or bacteria or is this a virus or bacteria that we've always had around and we just start getting a worsened symptoms of it.

You can send out an upper respiratory PCR panel, which is where we get like a swab from the back of the [00:13:00] throat and then some of them ask for blood as well. It's sent out to the lab, and then they test for the DNA of these different types of bacteria and viruses. Not all of them though again. There's only a handful of them that we do test for.

But if it does come back as negative, and that pet has worsening signs, like that cough is lasting for 6 to 8 weeks or they get pneumonia, then that kind of tells us that we need to send out that testing or alert the state veterinarian. That there's this pet who potentially could have this unknown respiratory virus.

But the thing is, we do have to send out that test so that they know that it's not one of the other types of viruses that it could potentially be or types of bacteria that it could potentially be. So it is a good idea to send out the test because then the researchers have those samples in order to be able to try to figure out what might be causing it.

Then because if it comes back negative, but it progresses to something worse than we'll already have that. So we'll have some answers to [00:14:00] provide for those researchers. So the answer to that simply is there is no test at this point. We can send out the samples, which would be great for researchers, but no test is known for this possibly unknown respiratory virus.

All right. 2nd most question that I get asked is going to be that. All right should I vaccinate my dog for kennel cough and influenza to try to avoid this unknown disease? Sure, vaccination is great. It helps boost the immune system. It helps fight off some of these respiratory diseases that we do know that they have but it's not necessarily going to stop the disease, right?

Just like with people who have the flu vaccine each year, the people who produce this try to figure out or predict which type of flu virus that we're going to get or what will be the most prominent for the next year. But there's no way to know exactly which strain it's going to be that's going to affect the most people.

We can just take a guess. The flu vaccine helps try to keep people out of the hospital so they don't progress to something like [00:15:00] pneumonia, but it's not going to mean that it stops us necessarily from getting the flu completely. The kennel cough vaccine, also known as Bordetella, and the influenza vaccine are the same way.

We don't know if this new virus or bacteria falls under those Bordetella and influenza vaccine categories, but at least we can help try to protect them from what we do know does cause an upper respiratory tract infection.

To answer the question, should I get my dog vaccinated for kennel cough and influenza? I still think it's a great idea, we just don't know if those vaccines will cover this new, possibly unknown upper respiratory disease.

Alright, third question I usually get is going to be, should I not board my dog or take them to grooming right now until this is all figured out?

So I tell people, whether this is possibly an unknown disease here or not, it's always a risk. No matter what, if this unknown disease didn't exist, would you have still taken your [00:16:00] dog to go to boarding or to grooming or daycare, knowing that they could still get kennel cough, right?

Even kennel cough can change into pneumonia. So if you would still put them at risk and do that, then, then it's still okay to take them to boarding and daycare and grooming and stuff. The hard part about this is, there's no way for us to tell if a dog who has been boarded or in grooming or daycare has kennel cough until somebody actually hears them coughing or sneezing, and then they can be isolated at that point.

But if we don't hear them cough or sneeze at first, there's no way to know, right? Maybe they're in boarding and somebody isn't there when that dog coughs, then there's no way for us to know that that dog has kennel cough. And some people suggested, why don't you just screen everybody before they go into boarding.

So like I said, the test comes back in about five to seven days. So if that comes back as negative, it doesn't test for [00:17:00] everything, which means the dog could still have kennel cough, but it doesn't come up positive on our testing. Or let's say they go in a week before, they're tested for kennel cough, now the pet parent takes them to somewhere else around other dogs two days later.

And now they come back for boarding and they've already been exposed. We didn't know it. And again, now we've put them into boarding. And they still potentially get kennel cough or an upper respiratory tract disease. So you have to think of this as the same risk based on ourselves. Would you go to the grocery store or to work during the holiday season?

Because there are more people who are sick with a cold during that time. Or would you not do that? Would you stay home because there's a risk of getting cold or flu or something during that time? Because more people are out, which means there's more symptoms going around, people don't necessarily want to stop doing their holiday shopping because they have a cold.

And so they're more likely [00:18:00] to go out to the public, which means more people get sick. So we have to think of it the same way. So would you risk that for yourself, knowing that if you get a cold or the flu, there is a potential that it could change into pneumonia and you could be in the hospital? Or do you take that risk and still go out?

Same thing with kennel cough or this up this unknown virus. Are you are you willing to take that risk that they might get kennel cough? Or this unknown disease, and if so, then then take them if you wouldn't take that risk, then then don't take them. It's really just going to be based on like what risk you are willing to take essentially. If they're vaccinated and you understand that the risk that they may get kennel cough or they may also get some sort of unknown respiratory disease, then then just take them. But there's no way to know, unfortunately, whether you should completely isolate them or should not isolate them.

All right. Interestingly, ethics also comes up into question after [00:19:00] I discuss these main other questions. People have asked me aren't you profiting from dispensing medication if these pets get sick? And actually kennel cough is usually very self limiting, meaning they don't necessarily need medications for it.

So I talked about that in the previous kennel cough podcast as well. This is just like us getting a cold. I can go to the store to get medicine to make sure my nose stops running while I sleep or some sort of cough suppressants so I'm not coughing while I'm working. But no medication is going to make my cold go away.

My body has to do that because it's a virus that my body has to get rid of. No, no antibiotics are going to help this. So the same is true for kennel cough. It really sucks listening to them cough. You feel really bad for them that you can't do very much to help them, but their body will naturally get over it without medications as long as it is actually one of these kennel coughs that doesn't turn into pneumonia.

There are even things that you can do at home, like just using a humidifier in [00:20:00] a small space, or steam therapy, I like to call it, where you can bring your dog into the bathroom when you're showering, turn off all of the fans, don't open the windows or anything, just allow that steam to build up anytime everybody goes to the shower, just bring the dog in there.

So it helps with getting a lot of stuff out of their lungs. You can also give like a tablespoon of honey to help with the cough. I do say though that that should only be used for adult dogs, not puppies, because just like in babies, they are more susceptible to botulism with those very small amounts in raw honey.

But that is something you can give to adult dogs. I wouldn't say they all like it very much, but but you can use that. It's when you see those signs of pneumonia, like I said, being lethargic, not really wanting to move around very much, not eating or changes in their breathing, that we actually have to start intervening.

Some doctors will give antibiotics and cough suppressants just right off the bat, just in case this is a bacteria and to help ease that [00:21:00] cough, but they don't have to have those things if this is a normal kennel cough. I actually prefer not to give cough suppressants unless someone's just like I cannot sleep.

My dog just is coughing constantly. I'll give it to them and just say, hey, can you just give it at bedtime? So that way you can sleep and your pet can sleep. And everybody's a little more comfortable. The reason why is I just want them to get all that stuff up and out of their system. I don't really like to suppress it as much, but

some dogs have to have a cough suppressant, especially if they have some other illness, like collapsing trachea, or dogs who are of the flatter nosed breed, our Bulldogs, Frenchies, Bostons, things like that. Because I don't want them to go into what's called Brachycephalic Syndrome.

Again, another podcast, we'll talk about that later. For those guys, I will give it to them, because I just don't want them to get worse. So what happens if your pet does get sick, the best thing is if they do have kennel cough like symptoms is to just help to stop the spread, essentially. [00:22:00] Just like when we get sick with a cold, try to keep them inside isolated from other dogs.

I usually tell people that you should do that for at least 1 week past the last time you hear them cough. Don't take them to daycare or boarding when you hear them coughing because, unfortunately, that's just going to pass it around to all the other dogs in the kennels and then maybe if you have to go away instead, try to get like a pet sitter to come into the home in those situations instead. If you have a dog that you know is sick.

Now, our biggest problem as veterinarians is trying to distinguish between like true disease and the hype of the media. Everyone is worried, which is understandable because we don't, we just don't have a lot of information at this point. But this means that we see a lot more cases of kennel cough. Which means now I have to determine, should this pet go on antibiotics or should it be hospitalized? And a lot of people say I want antibiotics in case this is this unknown disease. But again, there's no way to know if that unknown disease is even [00:23:00] responsive to antibiotics.

So that makes it a little bit difficult because we have to really use our best judgment to determine like which one should be hospitalized, which one should get antibiotics or which ones should we just allow the body to take care of it. I can tell you that definitely I've seen more cases of kennel cough this year than I ever have before.

And every person has asked me about this unknown disease. So far, I've only had 2 that have actually had pneumonia and both of them have survived so far. I have no idea what bacteria or virus it was, though, because those people opted not to test them. We don't know. The last report that was put out in Washington state has shown that since August, there were 16 reports of the suspected atypical respiratory disease, which is what they're calling this unknown disease an atypical respiratory disease. And of those only 2 of them had actually met the criteria of what the state would call an atypical respiratory disease. Those 2 are [00:24:00] recovering at least, so that's good.

Washington State University has been tracking submissions to the lab and so far they have not seen an uptick. But that also means though, that, that you have to send out the testing for it, which not every case does like with mine, in my two cases, they did not want to submit testing for it. If we start seeing a lot more veterinarians, like putting in testing for it, because we're worried about this unknown virus again, that's going to look like an uptick because more people have heard this in the media and now want to test for it.

But again, we don't. We don't have a test for it. We can test for those other viruses and bacteria that we do know cause upper respiratory disease. All right, to sum all this up, we don't know what this is. We don't know if it's a virus or bacteria. We don't have a test for it. And we are seeing an uptick in patients who are having kennel cough like symptoms.

So if I have an update later on, in the next few weeks is what a couple of the labs are saying is that they think that they'll have an [00:25:00] update in the next few weeks. I will put out updates for you guys so you have an understanding. I'm sorry. There isn't more information out there now, but at this point, we just have to treat them as if there is a possible unknown infection and isolate them the best that we can, if they are sick.

Like I said, I just got inundated with questions on this. So I just wanted to try to put something out there so that people understood a little bit more about it. And then, later when we get more information, like I said, I'll, I'll put more out for you guys. All right, so we're going to do our animal fact now, we're going to play a little game with this one called guess the animal.

All right, to start with your first clue is this animal is a deadly creature known to have killed humans. So I'm sure your brain is like starting to think about bears, sharks, lions, things like that. All right, we're gonna narrow it down. So this animal instantly paralyzes its prey with deadly venom.[00:26:00]

All right, now, now my mind, my mind would probably start thinking like snakes or something. Next clue is this animal lives in the water. So probably at this point, I'd be sort of, I think that the water moccasins do this as well, but that's that's probably where I would start thinking what this animal is.

And then your final clue is that this animal is actually an invertebrate. Alright, so do I have you stumped now? Alright, for those of you who thought of the Geography Cone Snail, then you would be correct. I'm sure I wouldn't have gotten that, so I'm sure most people wouldn't have gotten that. Maybe my wife and my kid right now because they listened to something about this a little bit.

Alright, so these guys are absolutely beautiful though. You should definitely look up to see what they look like. They just, just cone snails in general are really, really pretty. So you wouldn't think that, I would be talking about a [00:27:00] snail as like a deadly thing, but it's just animals just are so interesting to me.

There's so many different things that they can do, but. These guys have like a brown and whitish shell, but there's lots of them. There's 500 different types of cone snails that have lots of different patterns on them. So people really like them because their shells are so beautiful. The geographical cone snail is incredibly toxic though.

The scientists actually called their toxin a conotoxin. Super cool. I didn't even know they had that kind of a name. They have venom that has hundreds of different types of toxins in it, and then they'll shoot it with something that it looks like a tooth attached to a tongue, essentially, at their prey.

It's like a harpoon that they shoot, and then after they're done with that little harpoon, they just drop it, and then they have about 20 more ready to go. But when they shoot it at something, that venom instantly paralyzes it. So they typically shoot this at fish because that's what their [00:28:00] prey is.

So they'll shoot it at the fish so that they are instantly paralyzed. They cannot swim away because obviously it's a snail still, right? It can't really catch them before something else would eat them if it just swam away. So this just instantly paralyzes them. Then the snail goes over and eats the fish.

So humans have been known to have been stung by this with several deaths that have occurred. So people usually get stung on accident by stepping on them or trying to pick them up off the ocean floor because they just see their beautiful colors and either are looking at them or want to take them.

Unfortunately, there is no antivenom because there are over a hundred thousand different compounds in this venom. Which makes it impossible to target that pathway. So therefore, they just have to be treated until that toxin wears off. Which can be hours or even weeks. One scientist had compared their venom to being bitten by a cobra while eating [00:29:00] fugu.

Or that Japanese Blowfish. There are about three dozen recorded deaths in the last 300 years. So not a lot of them, they have been people who had died within two hours or three hours or five hours after that envenomation. In comparison, about 20 to 50 people die each year from a bee sting or wasp sting alone.

And from what I could find, the last known fatal sting was in 2015. And don't worry, they are mostly, they're not found all over the world. They are mostly found in very tropical waters like the Red Sea, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. But they are found off of the coast of Florida as well, FYI. So these guys can be used for great things, though.

So they have really great potential in the pharmaceutical world. They could be used as this super potent painkiller, about 10,000 times more potent than morphine, but without those addictive properties or side effects. So that is what has been postulated at this point.[00:30:00] We don't fully know though until we've tried it, right?

We also thought before that there are certain other types of pain medications that would not be addictive. I believe oxycodone was one of them, but they did end up being addictive to humans after all, right? So this again, there's just no way to know until we actually try it, but it is really interesting that we could find this really good potential pain medication.

All right, guys. So that is my talk on our unknown upper respiratory tract infection. Again, I'm sorry we don't have more, but at least you have some understanding of why we don't have more information at this point and why there's no testing for it. And hopefully there will be some updates here in the next couple of weeks, which I will again,

be happy to put out some updates as soon as we get them. Then next week, I believe we're going to be talking to Dr. Z about fleas. And then following that is going to be tick disease. And after that, I think that we're going to be talking to our doctor from the Humane Society as well.

So I will get to [00:31:00] our hypothermia cats and dogs. I promise I will do that. Alright, so until next time everybody, please keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe. Thanks.

Thank you guys for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or you just want to say hi, you can email me at Suggs, S U G G S @ VetsplanationPodcast.com or visit the website at VetsplanationPodcast.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Vetsplanation. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you back here next week.

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