Diet taboos for dogs coughing

High-salt and high-sugar processed foods, raw and cold irritating foods, high histamine-allergenic foods, and finely chopped foods with hard textures must not be touched. The rest of the conventional foods that are light, room-temperature, and soft in texture can basically be eaten normally as long as the dog is not allergic. There is no need to be excessively taboo.

Don’t believe it, among the cough cases I received at the pet hospital, nine out of ten cases were aggravated not by the disease itself, but by the owner’s well-intentioned “nutritional supplement” operation. A while ago, a Corgi owner came to the emergency room with his dog in his arms in the middle of the night. He said that the dog had just coughed twice due to a common cold. He fed him iced goat milk in the afternoon to replenish nutrients. As a result, he coughed in the middle of the night as if he wanted to cough out his lungs. He squatted on the ground and stretched his neck to pant. It was found that the cold milk irritated the already edematous upper respiratory tract mucosa, causing a spasmodic cough. Speaking of this, some people may ask, is it okay to feed sugar-free yogurt at room temperature? There is currently no unified conclusion in the industry: many pet bloggers will recommend that dogs with dry coughs be fed a small amount of soothing throat. Doctors in our hospital are also divided into two groups. One group believes that as long as the dog is not lactose intolerant, a small amount of room-temperature unadded yogurt can indeed relieve throat discomfort. ； Another school of thought believes that dairy products themselves will increase the viscosity of phlegm. If the dog coughs with phlegm, it will make the secretions more difficult to discharge and the blockage will be more uncomfortable. To be on the safe side, we generally advise the owner to stop all dairy products first, and it is not too late to feed the baby again after the cough is gone.

In addition to raw and cold food, the most easily overlooked ones are heavily seasoned human food and processed pet snacks. A little girl who raised a Bichon Frize brought her dog to a follow-up consultation. She said that her kennel cough was almost gone. She fed her dog half a piece of salt-baked chicken skin the day before yesterday. The next day, she coughed so hard that her voice became hoarse and she refused to even eat food. During the laryngoscopy, you can see that the throat is so red that it is about to ooze blood. The high salt stimulation has further aggravated the mucosal edema and increased the secretions. The same goes for high-sugar foods, but there is an exception here: if a dog over 1 year old has a dry cough without phlegm, many clinical veterinarians will recommend feeding 1-2g of pure honey to relieve the discomfort. This amount of sugar will not burden the body and has a good throat soothing effect. ； However, dogs under 1 year old must not be touched. Honey may contain botulinum spores that can poison puppies. If the dog has a bacterial cough or has obvious phlegm when coughing, it must not be fed. Sugar will accelerate bacterial reproduction and slow down the recovery.

There is another type of taboo that many people have never heard of—allergenic foods high in histamine. If your dog's cough is caused by allergies, such as seasonal hay fever, dust mite allergy, or allergic bronchitis, then seafood, mangoes, pineapples, pineapples, and other high-histamine foods must not be touched. Last year, I received a French Bulldog. It was originally suffering from seasonal allergic cough. The owner wanted to give it some protein and fed it two Arctic sweet shrimps. That night, it developed laryngeal edema. When it arrived, its tongue was purple and it almost suffocated. It took a long time to rescue it before it recovered. Even if it is not an allergic cough, these allergenic foods will increase the body's inflammatory response and slow down the recovery. If possible, try not to feed them.

Another thing to remind is that it is best to stop the finely ground food with hard texture, such as dried bones, chopped nuts, and unsoaked hard dog food. When coughing, the dog's throat mucosa is already in a damaged state, and it will hurt if hard debris is scratched. If it is accidentally sucked into the trachea, it will be even more troublesome. There was a golden retriever owner who fed dried beef bone chips when his dog coughed. As a result, a small piece of crumbs got stuck at the entrance of the trachea. The dog coughed for three days and still had a fever. Finally, an endoscopy was performed to remove the crumbs. He suffered a lot.

When my own squeamish border collie suffered from kennel cough last winter, I initially thought of feeding it some of my favorite freeze-dried supplements. As soon as I opened the bag, a colleague from the same hospital stopped me and said that freeze-dried supplements were too hard and scratching his swollen throat would only worsen the discomfort. Later, I fed it warm-soaked low-fat prescription food for a week, occasionally adding two spoons of boiled pumpkin or boiled minced chicken breast, and stopped all snacks. It was better than other dogs who came to the doctor at the same time by two or three days, and there was no cough or difficulty in breathing.

In fact, there are really not so many random taboos spread on the Internet. "You can't eat chicken or beef if you have a cough" are all unfounded rumors. As long as it is boiled, without additives, and cooked soft, you can feed it. On the contrary, it can supplement protein to help it recover. The core logic is actually very simple: Just don’t mess up the already inflamed throat and respiratory tract. When in doubt, feed warm, light, soft food, and you will never go wrong.