Warning to dog owners in south Dublin

My poor girl started coughing really badly over the weekend. As I feared, it's kennel cough. The vet said there's a particularly strong strain going around and she's now on a serious course of antibiotics and antiinflammatories and hopefully on the mend.

Since our girl hasn't been in kennels or other people's houses, the vet said she must have picked it while playing with dogs out on her walks. It has a 2-3 week incubation period. The main symptom is a honking goose-like cough, like in the video. Our girl also had interrupted feeding patterns. She was still eating, just not all at once and at odd hours. She also had inconsistent bowel movements.

I generally walk her around Rathfarnham, Knocklyon and Firhouse areas, often down by the Dodder Valley Park walk along the river and up by Knocklyon Park and this would be where she interacts most with other dogs.

According to the vet, it is very treatable but the longer you leave it the harder the recovery. Also, they are generally only infectious during the incubation period, once they start actually coughing they aren't any longer for the most part. It does make it very hard to trace.

I know there are a lot of dogs who suffer from allergies around this time of year, so I just wanted to warn people in case they might wrongly attribute it to that.