Wednesday, August 30, 2017

I promised Nicola, my daughter, that I will take her one day to see New York. We booked 5 days in New York to see all the city's attractions: the Statue of Liberty, the Rockfeller Centre, Central Park, Times Square, The Met, Guggenheim Museum, the bridges. She was very excited about the trip and so was I.

But Sparky was not feeling well since Sunday and I am not sure why. The first sign of something happening was on Sunday while playing fetch with the ball on a meadow.

While running after the ball, I heard him making some sounds when breathing. I thought that he had some throat irritation which would go away in a day so did not pay much attention to it.

Next day, he started coughing, not too often but enough to get our attention. He also started moving slower, sometimes very slowly as if in pain. This happened before when he strained a muscle while running in the park so we hoped that it will go away this time too.

I took him to the vet who suggested blood tests and xrays. I was reluctant to do them because why do such complicated tests when most probably he just had an infection? I was sure that he will not stay still for the xrays so sedation would be needed. So without blood tests and xray, what else can it be? The vet explained that they had many cases of kennel cough recently which is contagious and any dog can take it from other dogs in the dog park. Kennel cough would last a few weeks but it is not dangerous even if unpleasant and stressful. She could not be 100% sure without doing more tests but the chances of being kennel cough were high.

So she prescribed the antibiotics which we started giving Sparky. The antibiotics did not seem to bring an improvement for the next 2 days so on Wednesday, just before leaving to New York, I thought about going again to the vet for detailed investigation.

My wife, Sorana, calmed me down saying that if the situation would not change in the next one or two days, then she would take the dog to the clinic.