First, how urgent is this?
Go now
- Obvious effort to breathe, or open-mouth breathing.
- Visible effort to breathe at rest, with a strong belly movement.
- A blue tongue or blue gums.
- Coughing until the dog collapses or briefly loses consciousness.
- Coughing up fresh blood.
Contact your vet today
- Coughing for several days without improving, or waking at night to cough.
- A small breed aged 4 or over with a honking cough, triggered by pressing the neck.
- Coughing with falling energy and appetite, or weight loss.
- Other dogs in the household or the same walking group coughing too.
Record and observe
- The odd cough, with normal energy, appetite and activity.
- Coughing only when excited, pulling on the lead, or when the weather changes, and normal otherwise.
- A heart patient already under vet care: count the coughing fits, and go back if they increase.
Before you set off
- How often, when (night, after exercise, when excited) and what it sounds like (film it).
- Whether white foam or food comes up at the end of a fit.
- Any recent contact with other dogs, a boarding stay or a dog park.
- A list of medicines and the time of the last dose.
- Do not give human cough or cold medicine; do not stop a prescribed medicine on your own.
What your vet may ask and do
- Ask: when the cough started, and what brings it on.
- Ask: any breathing effort, fainting or reduced exercise tolerance.
- Ask: contact with other dogs, and vaccination and worming history.
- Do: listen to heart and lungs, and palpate the windpipe.
- Do: X-rays for the windpipe, lungs and heart size.
- Do: heart ultrasound, for a cough caused by heart disease.
- Do: tracheoscopy or CT where needed.
Where to go in Hong Kong
- Hong Kong 24-hour vet list
- 24-hour emergency, Hong Kong Island
- 24-hour emergency, Kowloon
- 24-hour emergency, New Territories
- Clinics with heart ultrasound
- Clinics with CT
- What emergency and test fees look like
Call the clinic before you drive over, to confirm tonight's arrangements and the location.