09-15-2013, 08:54 AM
Brought my beautiful pound puppy girl over with me shortly after I arrived. She arrived on December 22, 2011, which was the beginning of a dry spell. Her only health problem was high blood pressure, for which she takes medication. She also had a slight limp in her back rear leg, congenital so nothing they could do there.
A few months ago she developed a cough, out of the blue. Took her to a vet and he said watch her for a month and maybe it will self resolve. I watched her for 3 days and concluded she needed immediate medical care.
She was initially diagnosed with congestive heart failure (2 vets) and was put on two meds to address that, including a diuretic. She got sicker and could barely walk. And her cough persisted.
I took her to a vet in Waimea who methodically and convincingly ruled out heart disease of any kind. The vet actually examined my dog, was conversant with her medical history to an astonishing degree and was highly credible. The culprit, she opined, was the lungs. She eliminated bacteria and parasites as a cause of the inflammation. After tests, she concluded my dog had allergic brochitis, sometimes also called COPD. She thought the trigger was probably environmental. She suggested that the "vog down there" might be the trigger and pointed to an increased incidence of lung issues among people in Puna. When I got my dog back from Waimea (where she stayed a week) she was perfectly normal. With meds, she remained fine for about a week. Then her cough returned, albeit in a milder form.
She had a rough spell last week and so I took her to a local vet to see if I needed to change up the meds. He confirmed the COPD diagnosis and said it was probably the vog and just sort of threw up his hands.
I mentioned this to friends who thought this was not a credible source of whatever is provoking her coughing. arguing that we have air so clean that scientists use it as a standard against which to check other air. (I hear that a lot, don't you?).
She is really struggling now. She wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes just to say "Daddy, I can't breathe". The meds help only intermittently and I am concerned that I brought her to the wrong place and that to save her, I may need to part with her and ask my ex-partner on the mainland if he will care for her.
My personal thinking is that we have very high air quality except when we don't --and then we have a very bad air quality that presents a danger to some people and, perhaps to pets. I very rarely notice it and never have any reaction to it, but others do I guess. I only notice it when I smell it, and to me it smells like BBQ. But I never have a physical reaction, other than olfactory, that I am aware of.
Obviously the usual patterns have been disrupted and it is unusually dry right now, which often equates with increased vog (although the tradewinds are blowing very well today so I guess it CAN be warm and dry without a Kona wind). But those conditions weren't present when the cough began.
I've done almost everything I can so I am going to crowd source the issue.
1. Is it voggier than usual now? I absolutely don't notice it.
2. Is there a greater incidence of pulmonary disease in Puna than elsewhere on the island?
3. Is there any anecdotal evidence of the vog affecting pets? Sneezing cats? Mucous in mongoose? White tigers coughing their stripes off?
4. If pets do react to vog, is there a remedy other than bronchodilators I haven't considered?
A few months ago she developed a cough, out of the blue. Took her to a vet and he said watch her for a month and maybe it will self resolve. I watched her for 3 days and concluded she needed immediate medical care.
She was initially diagnosed with congestive heart failure (2 vets) and was put on two meds to address that, including a diuretic. She got sicker and could barely walk. And her cough persisted.
I took her to a vet in Waimea who methodically and convincingly ruled out heart disease of any kind. The vet actually examined my dog, was conversant with her medical history to an astonishing degree and was highly credible. The culprit, she opined, was the lungs. She eliminated bacteria and parasites as a cause of the inflammation. After tests, she concluded my dog had allergic brochitis, sometimes also called COPD. She thought the trigger was probably environmental. She suggested that the "vog down there" might be the trigger and pointed to an increased incidence of lung issues among people in Puna. When I got my dog back from Waimea (where she stayed a week) she was perfectly normal. With meds, she remained fine for about a week. Then her cough returned, albeit in a milder form.
She had a rough spell last week and so I took her to a local vet to see if I needed to change up the meds. He confirmed the COPD diagnosis and said it was probably the vog and just sort of threw up his hands.
I mentioned this to friends who thought this was not a credible source of whatever is provoking her coughing. arguing that we have air so clean that scientists use it as a standard against which to check other air. (I hear that a lot, don't you?).
She is really struggling now. She wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes just to say "Daddy, I can't breathe". The meds help only intermittently and I am concerned that I brought her to the wrong place and that to save her, I may need to part with her and ask my ex-partner on the mainland if he will care for her.
My personal thinking is that we have very high air quality except when we don't --and then we have a very bad air quality that presents a danger to some people and, perhaps to pets. I very rarely notice it and never have any reaction to it, but others do I guess. I only notice it when I smell it, and to me it smells like BBQ. But I never have a physical reaction, other than olfactory, that I am aware of.
Obviously the usual patterns have been disrupted and it is unusually dry right now, which often equates with increased vog (although the tradewinds are blowing very well today so I guess it CAN be warm and dry without a Kona wind). But those conditions weren't present when the cough began.
I've done almost everything I can so I am going to crowd source the issue.
1. Is it voggier than usual now? I absolutely don't notice it.
2. Is there a greater incidence of pulmonary disease in Puna than elsewhere on the island?
3. Is there any anecdotal evidence of the vog affecting pets? Sneezing cats? Mucous in mongoose? White tigers coughing their stripes off?
4. If pets do react to vog, is there a remedy other than bronchodilators I haven't considered?