Brian explains kennel cough as multiple bacterial and viral infections, not one disease. Diagnosis relies on fever and tracheal pinch response. Treatment ranges from antibiotics like trimethoprim-sulfa to natural options: vitamin C, echinacea, honey, and bone broth. The intranasal Bordetella vaccine is live and freeze-dried, lasting 12-15 months with minimal shedding.
Chapters
Hi everybody, hi everybody, we are live-ish as Brent says. We are just pretending tonight. Yeah, absolutely. I feel alive. I still feel very alive because it's morning for us, Brandon. This is great. I'm firing on all cylinders here.
Oh, I'm looking forward to this.
I can't wait. Unfortunately, it's a weak subject for me, but when we do get into it, this is going to be somewhere where we can seriously pick your brains because we're all very confused on this, on this particular topic we want to talk about. But before we talk about that, could I just say thanks to everybody on Patreon? You'll find us at rawpetmedics@patreon.com. That's been really helpful, guys, and it just keeps us going and it helps us to do more exciting things such as— Bren, what's happening?
Oh, well, wow. You know, we've got some great news for you because we've got these guys are, you know, they're coming to join us. But you've got even more exciting news. What have you managed to discuss with them?
Yeah, so we were talking last in the last show we did, and we were saying that, look, there is just too much to do in 45 minutes. First of all, you know, we want to talk about Karen, or talk to Karen and Rodney about them. You know, I want to learn a bit about them, get their opinions on some things that we find that, you know, that kind of flick our switches. So like, I want to learn a bit about them, where they came from, talking about that. And then Nick was saying, but we've all got questions to ask about the book. So I begged and I asked, would by any chance would they be happy to do two shows? So we could do the first show about them and talk about the book, absolutely. But I, I want to— after writing my own, I want to talk about the process of it. It's, you know, there is so much to talk about just there with that, talking about them in the book. And then we can do a second show where it's just about our take on the book, where, you know, we all get to— we've all got a copy of the book now, we can have a quick read of it, and we're picking out bits that, you know, that stick in our mind. That is a whole other show because, you know, I imagine, Brian, just like Nick was saying, like, there's just some things that he wants to say, this is unbelievable, tell us more about this topic. That alone, you're gone for 15 minutes, you know. So yeah, that's what they've agreed to do.
And so many things, so many common things that we've been talking about over the last few months that are brought together in dog-specific stuff within this book. Um, it's a great read. Um, uh, I know we're sort of getting through it ready for next week. Um, and you know, guys, just a reminder, you know, it's going to be available to the general public in October. You can get pre-orders in now, but you know, have a look at the book. But if you want to know more, join these guys as they join us. Well, we've got next Tuesday the 31st, so join us then, and that's another great live to look forward to.
Yeah, can't wait for that. So it's great that we've got extra time with them as well because that's going to be very good for us. But for tonight, Beren, we are going to be talking about cough. This is a subject I can't say I'm an absolute expert on, and it's one I'm highly dubious of, as I imagine lots of people listening are. So I am definitely going to be the concerned pet owner here in this situation because I need to pick your brains on all things cough. So could we just start at the start? You know, my dog seems to be coughing, is coughing, okay, and I'm bringing them to the vet. What's your first take? What's the first thing you're thinking? Tell us, start us off.
Okay, so look, there's many different causes of cough, and we're going to concentrate on those different causes of cough in the infectious causes tonight, because really that's where kennel cough is, an infectious cough that we want to deal with, and the many constituent parts. There are other sorts of cough which will be looked at by your vet. That could be down to the heart and heart disease. It could be down to asthma and allergies. So, you know, if you've got more of a wheeze, a sort of soft cough, I call it a sort of cough, then we may be looking at slightly different aspects. But if you've got a really mucusy, productive cough, a bit coarser, more of a cough, then you need to be thinking there may be an infectious, especially if they're off color, they've got a temperature, then we're talking infectious infectious causes of cough. And we need to put to bed some of the misunderstandings around kennel cough, what that means. Is it an individual disease or is it a syndrome? Is it a combination of many different options of infections? I do want to know about that. So let's concentrate about the infectious causes tonight.
Before you leave asthma, dogs can get asthma. That's new to me. Do you just blast them with the steroid inhaler?
You know, so all of these have different ways of diagnosing them, but yet, you know, ultimately it's not ideal to have to resort back to steroid inhalers or any sort of medication. It's looking at why is that level of inflammation got to a point where they've got cells within their airways which are causing massive histamine release.
Cool, that's so interesting.
So we've talked, we've talked in many of our lives about histamine buildup and release and, you know, the levels of inflammation that can lead to that. So, you know, let's put that one to one side. Guys, if you want to look at that, you know, there's lots of stuff on skin, on gut, which will come into when we talk about allergies, and that's really where we talk about asthma as well, especially cats, especially with cats.
That's nuts, that's cool. And can dogs get cough from somebody that's smoking inside their house?
Yeah, so again, absolutely the same as looking at the causes of cough for people, but what happens with smoke and the irritation and therefore inflammation that will happen within the airways, but also the motor effects on the cilia, so where the mucus is produced in the the chest and how the cilia on the cells of the airways will actually pump that mucus out and clear the airways. It can be inhibited by the smoke. So not just the nicotine, but the physical tar and particulate matter and stuff that thickens the mucus and also inhibits the cilia from functioning.
Ah, so that's why you have to hack it up more because it just doesn't come up as easy. That's interesting.
It's not so liquidy.
Yeah, yeah, well, that is interesting. Okay, so you just sound like you're a smoker. What's going on? I did flirt with them for a while, and they never leave you at the thought of them, but they are some viciously bad things to be doing. So, yeah, okay, so I'm presenting with a cough. So now you're telling me that, you know, kennel cough is just one type of infection that can cause cough. So what's the first thing you do to tell me which type of cough has brought my dog into the clinic.
Right, well, look, you know, if they've got a temperature, you know, this is the thing. So, you know, have they got a temperature? Have they been in contact with other dogs?
So they'd have a temperature if they've got a virus or bacterial infection. Yeah, absolutely. Their body's trying to burn it out, and so that's where the temperature is. That wouldn't happen with asthma or particulate smoke or whatever because the temperature isn't needed in that respect.
That's right. So that's usually an indicator. If they've got a temperature, it points more likely that they've got an an issue with an infection. They don't always have a temperature, and I'm sure if you've ever had a cough or a cold, you know, or your child has, they don't always burn a fever.
Yeah, no.
So, you know, they've got the number 11 runny nose, they've got the, you know, the bit of a cough as they come back from school, or you're just about to experience that, I think, you know, your kids are just—
I'm not messing, Brian, the amount of calls that come into the house from— oh my God, just relentlessly laid out we were for a while. You wait till she starts going to school.
I look forward to it. So temperature isn't necessary, so it then becomes about contact. So, you know, if you're in an isolated home and they've never been in contact with other dogs other than, you know, maybe your own little pack, the likelihood of an infectious cause is much less likely. It's very remote. However, if you're a social animal or you've got a dog walker or you go to training classes or you run loose in the park with lots of dogs every day, okay, things like that. So generally all of these infectious coughs are nose-to-nose transmission, you know, they're going to be close proximity, you know, they've got to be within a distance, within the 2 meters, you know, they're going to be within that space, that airspace, to have to spread. So, you know, even for dog walkers that maybe walk their dog separately but they all go in the same van, yeah, okay, that's a risk. Okay, um, you know, uh, so this is one of the reasons that they became known as kennel coughs, because obviously that was one of the big areas that dogs used to mix. People go on holiday, they put their dogs into kennels, strangers dogs are together and before you know it you can get a raft of infection going through. Or indeed in rescue organizations or in charity organizations that may be training lots of dogs together. I mean, you worked in guide dogs.
That's right. I always say the same analogy with kennel cough. You would see it sweeping through the kennels, like, I mean, and because you don't want to take the dogs out of training, it costs so much, all the hassle that comes. But I mean, one dog gets it, forget about isolating them and all that. Done. And it just went bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. And within a day you've got— not all the dogs get it, but within a day a lot of them are coughing, and in come the vets again. And as I always say, we would say to the vet, you know, we have been dosing these dogs up to the eyeballs, they're the most dosed dogs on the planet, what's the story with the cough? And they said, oh, it's not always effective, which leads to my confusion on kennel cough, which we're going to explore now. So very, very infectious, this And is that the case for all viral causes of cough? Are they all generally— that's why you're coughing, because it wants to spread itself around? Is that the—
yeah, I mean, look, you know, the obvious way of these viruses getting from patient to patient are going to be, you know, that level. And the thing to remember, it's not that you were in contact with them yesterday. It's, you know, usually these will have at least 3, but generally a 7-day window or incubation, we call that. So that's basically from them receiving the virus or bacteria into their systems to mature enough to replicate enough to get to a point where it's going to cause disease. Yeah, cough in your dog can generally take about 7 days. Okay, so they talk 3 to 10 days as this incubation period. Generally it's about 7 days.
Okay, cool. Right, so you, uh, coming back to it, so kennel cough is one type of these infections. There's lots of infections that can cause coughs. Kennel cough as well.
Now this is the confusion. So actually kennel cough as a syndrome is labeled for all of those infectious coughs. Oh, of course, they can be, of course, yeah, it can be given in a kennel environment. Yeah, so this is why you could dose them up to the eyeballs, as you said, yeah, with a protective vaccine for the serious one, and we're going to talk about—
yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I actually meant to say. That's— sorry.
Yeah, actually, you're not giving— that's as different, uh, as anything from a viral cause. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you're never going to be protective against the other causes.
Yeah.
So, um, and this is absolutely not just yourself, but yeah, most kennels will say, I don't know why we bother with that because it's just not effective. Yeah, because they'll experience those infectious coughs that rip through their kennels. But generally are the other minor viruses, you know, influenzas, parainfluenzas, you know, coronaviruses, all the way through to, you know, bacteria like Pasteurellas, you know, even staphylococcal infections. All of these can cause this.
So kennel cough is the broad umbrella term for all these things that can cause cough. So if you're just vaccinating for one of them, well, you've got all these other things that could have been causing it. Yeah, so how does the vet know which one to vaccinate your dog for?
So the proper way, the absolute definitive way, is you would take bronchoalveolar lavages. So you'd stick a tube down the dog's throat, you'd pump in some saline, you pull out the fluids, you'd effectively send that for cytology and culture of viruses and bacteria, look at what's going on. Now that's, you know, that's a gold standard that nobody's ever going to do. There's risks involved with it, or pay for it, it's really expensive. So look, some really easy simple rules are: one, if you've been in contact with other dogs, okay, and that enables you to rule out that they've eaten some grass and it's got stuck the wrong place, or they've got a splinter or something like that. But if they've been in contact with other dogs, you know, from talking to your friends on the park that their dogs have coughed, you know, then the thing to do is one, quickly talk to them. Well, how long did it last in your dog? Okay, because if the cough lasted for 2 to 3 days, maybe even up to 7 days, and then subsided, then generally that is going to be either a weak bacteria or a virus. And it's just worked its way through the system. Okay, and that means that you can almost plan your own dog's illness.
Yeah, that's great tips, I love it.
And give some really simple things that actually, you know, going back to this trying to avoid overuse of antibiotics and steroids and things like that. Yeah, thinking about, you know what, look, no big deal, honey, just, you know, give some vitamin C get some immune stimulants on there, things like echinacea, and just wrap them up, keep them at home, so they're not passing the cough on. Okay, and collar off, don't be walking them on a collar. Absolutely, anything that causes the irritation. So that's probably the one thing is find out a little bit more about what other people's experiences with the coughs have been in your local area. Then, as Nick said, there are a couple of other ways, literally tracheal irritation. So this is the airway that runs from the back of your throat down to your lungs. If you run your fingers up and down your throat, you'll feel it. You can feel it also in your dogs. Yeah, if you just give that a little squeeze in your dog, okay, not hard, please don't choke your dog, but if you just give them a little tracheal pinch, we call it, Generally, there are only a few serious coughs that will cause the level of irritation which will cause them at that point to cough, because most of them will have a sore throat, not necessarily a tracheal irritation.
Okay.
And so if you do a tracheal pinch and they are honking with a cough, okay, it's like a constant cough.
Yeah, I've heard it.
Then that is more concerning that it's more likely to be this border teller.
Okay, it's a step closer to a diagnosis.
Okay, so it's a hint, but I would definitely say the only definitive way to be absolutely sure would be to do this bronchiolar lavage. Yeah, effectively allows us to look at the cells that are being reproduced, look at the organisms within the mucus under the cytology, that looking down the microscope, and then also the cultures, that some of these can be extremely hard to culture, and especially the viruses and how they have to culture those can be extremely hard. So don't be disappointed if your vet just takes a normal swab and comes back and says we couldn't grow anything.
Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, it's one of those. So after the tracheal pinch, and let's say you're still not sure, you're— but you're leaning towards, okay, this is quite a nasty cough what do you do then as the vet?
So look, we've got to check what's happening with the glands, you know, how severe is it, you know, do we need to protect that dog because it can cause them to go off their food, it could cause them, you know, airway restriction. You've got to be saying to them, please keep those dogs isolated from other dogs. Now within the household, it's probably already gone through the whole household but when we're talking about friends and family's dog coming to visit or going out on walks, please, we say, yeah, don't let them mix whilst you can still hear a cough. And our advice has been to owners, actually wait 3 to 5 days after you've heard the last cough, because there's often points where you won't hear the cough.
Yeah, exactly. Out the back garden having a little cough, and then, yeah.
And hence this has been really the advice from onset of symptoms that we've talked about for humans. Why they talked initially about a 10 to 14 day isolation period to stop people going out and.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, my cough is better today. I think I'll go out and it's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, so that's the advice you give to them. But is there any treatment? What sort of treatment do you give? Before we even start talking about the vaccination and that kind of stuff, that's a good idea to do. You as a vet though, you're saying, okay, this might be— what is it, Bordetella? What's the name? Yeah, this might be Bordetella or might be something else. What are the treatments that you have in your repertoire to help improve the dog, or is anything needed bar the things you've just mentioned— your vitamin C, your echinacea, your rest, manuka honey, the things that we know do help?
So look, there are particular antibiotics, okay? Now some have different reps as far as the side effects, etc. Some of the trimethoprim-sulfur ones can be very good against Bordetella, but they have a risk of immune-mediated disease associated with them. You know, we've talked about this with Nick in previous episodes that can lead to things like dry eye, to polyarthritis, you know, so all sorts of elements there. Even, you know, getting other problems around the body with blood, you know, issues, etc. So, you know, remember, not everything is risk-free. If you choose one of those antibiotics, you've got to weigh that up against the severity of cough, and certainly you want to avoid the pneumonia situation. So if your dog is deteriorating and struggling to breathe and oxygenate and get up and around, then absolutely go back to your vet and say, look, you know, maybe we do need to take next step.
What's the descent of pneumonia, Bren? What's that descent? If it started off as Bordetella and it goes down into the lungs, what is it? Why does it suddenly become pneumonia?
Because it's usually actually a secondary infection. So the Bordetella will interfere with the normal mucus elevator situation of getting the mucus out of the lungs, and what you then get is secondary infection. So you'll get compounding with other issues that can become a problem. And you know, those are, you know, where you get multiple bacteria and viruses mixing together. And this is often the way with the viruses, that actually the primary viruses are very unlikely to cause a serious infection. It becomes the secondary bacteria and fungal infections. That's right, that can absolutely, uh, knock the, the patient on the head.
I'm not, I'm not in, I'm nodding profusely here because that's exactly why they say Lyme disease and co-infections, that the initial disease or what you think is the virus is almost irrelevant by the time they've caught us 2 or 3 months down the line and it's been cooking away because suddenly an upsurge of viruses that might have been sitting dormant in your system for a long time that you might have beaten ages ago but they're not fully gone. And yeast and fungi are mentioned in that, and it's just like anything can rise up. They see it, they take advantage of a weakened environment, and they just, you know, that's so interesting. So yes, Lyme disease and co-infections, this sounds very much like this. So then it becomes a much more difficult thing to tame then, Ben, I imagine, once it becomes—
because you run away into a cascade of, you know, inflammation in the lung which impedes yet further their ability to fight the infection, but also to get oxygen through and to the organs that are required, you know. So I think, you know, those— that's why we want to avoid pneumonia at all costs.
Okay, that makes sense. So you send them home, you're giving them some pretty great advice that we wish we heard from most of our vets all the time, you know. Tell us a little bit about the vitamin C. Like, can you just buy ascorbic acid, which is your vitamin C? I just buy vitamin C in the natural health shop and pop it in my dog.
Yeah, so this is a really interesting point, and actually somebody asked this last week, you know, with— they were told to just feed a standard diet and give vitamin C, but it didn't work for their dog's limb deformity because they had not a bone disorder but a soft tissue issue that was causing some deformity. And I pointed out that actually you can't do that, you know, diet, the base of diet should never be reduced, you know, that's the that, you know, using bone broths and, and great, you know, supports, you know, chicken soup, you know, it is effectively a bone broth. You know, it's great for supporting your normal gut flora and your immune system. So you should be using that. But vitamin C actually comes in many forms. And this, you know, we talk about this a lot with artificial minerals and vitamins. And actually, you know, doing research often they're using the ideal natural source of these vitamins. Then a company coming along and saying, you know what, I can source that really cheaply by making it in an artificial vat and pretending that because the molecule looks similar, that it's the same thing.
Vitamin E is the classic example there. So we have, we have vitamin E is amazingly complex amount of vitamins. When they say just vitamin E or vitamin B, we're tempted to think, oh, it's just one molecule. It's like, oh, it's just a it's a group name for a whole lot of things. With vitamin E, there's lots of them, and the best supplements have— I think there's over 100 different, uh, whatever type of term you'd use for vitamin E, and yet the best supplement you can get might have 20. So when they say mixed tocopherols in dry food, because vitamin E is a very fragile animal, it hates air, light, heat. You look at it, it's gone. And you need it as your main antioxidant in your body. Fat will just— it needs to be there when you're eating fat. So they put these mixed tocopherols in dry food, but that's only a small token of what vitamin E actually is in nature. They take these things because they're easy to replicate and the cheaper vitamin E versions are just like, as you said, 2 or 3 isomers. What's the, what's the term used?
Yeah, effectively. And the thing that you get with this is that ascorbic acid is quite irritant to the intestine.
Okay.
So, you know, it can be not great for those people that have sensitive guts anyway.
Okay.
But also it's almost an ionic version. It is water-soluble and it is urinated out so readily that the body barely has a chance to use it. I mean, look, vitamin C is a great antioxidant.
Yeah.
Okay. Really useful in those circumstances. And most dogs will get enough of that just through eating their meat. Okay. And the general things. And, you know, there's some really interesting research about actually, if you've got good fresh meat, that you don't need all of this fruit and veg that they worry about with scurvy. Okay, it's only when you put people onto the dried biscuit diet of the sailors where there wasn't fresh meat available that scurvy became an issue. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily that the the fruit and veg.
Yeah, it was simplified to limes, you know, but come on. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get that. But like, surely with vitamin C you need so much of it. I mean, I see Bill and Hurst there, he's recommending moderate stress 200 milligrams per kilo of dog. I mean, that's a serious, serious dose. And then 300 milligrams for moderate stress. Like, so they don't put vitamin C in pet food because dogs, when they're healthy, can make their own vitamin C to some point, some degree. But certainly not when they're, when they're unhealthy. But so what about dosing with vitamin C? What's the advice?
I think what you've got to understand there is, again, it's what type of vitamin C. He's not specified. And I feel that he's had to go that high because he will go for what's readily available.
Yeah.
Yeah. If you go for ascorbic acid, you know, it's cheap, so there's no real limits.
Yeah.
Really hard to overdose with vitamin C. Yeah. Yeah. Urinate the excess out. Yeah. So, you know, the only thing you're really going to be limited by is the level of diarrhea you get if you eat too much.
Yeah.
So what you need to look at there is, no, if you go for liposomal, so that's surrounded by a fat layer, or esterified vitamin C that's actually bound to other organic compounds, that helps increase the absorption level it protects the gut. It also means that it's more readily taken up by cells and utilized for its antioxidant capability. So the actual levels that you need in those circumstances can be massively reduced.
Yeah. Okay, cool.
And so it's all about bioavailability.
Okay, it is. Yeah. So esterified vitamin C, uh, Bren, if we are looking for that, do we just buy that online? I just had a quick little Google to see the comparisons and prices. So esterified, as with your minerals, you know, your body wants them in their natural form, as we keep on mentioning this all the time, you know. So when it's bound to a carbon molecule, you know, it's like you're going with the guy that's invited to the party type thing. So can we just buy esterified vitamin C online and dose our dogs?
Yeah, I mean, look, there are some companies that do ester C, Okay. Lambert's is one, just as an example. Okay. There are many different companies. If you looked out for esterified, this is the bound to other organic compounds to help absorption. That's certainly a way forward. I think the next step up is people recognizing this liposomal vitamin C, which is where it's bound around.
I've never heard of that.
So it's, it's the next step up and you get what you pay for.
Yeah.
And it is so difficult because there is no, you know, of course somebody could charge £500 for that and somebody could charge a fiver.
Yeah, yeah.
I, you know, there are so many companies out there, I couldn't tell you which one of those was ripping you off and which one of those was absolutely on the money with what they're producing. And I think we've talked about this with things like green-lipped mussel oil extract. You know, it can be hugely different. Yeah.
What variations are But you are stepping, at least when you start talking about esterified vitamin C and liposomal vitamin C, which is new to me, I need to read up. So at least you're moving towards a really, a much better quality vitamin C. And yes, it's more expensive, but you use a hell of a lot less of it, so there's that balance as well. So, okay, that's really interesting. So, and then there's echinacea, which studies are showing it's really effective in kennel cough in dogs, but any kind of herb that's going to boost your immune system.
Yeah, yeah, yarrow, there's a few, look, there's a few out there, you know, but echinacea is the most commonly recognized one, widely available in pretty much most pharmacies, you know, on the high street. So, you know, it's readily recognized and certainly easy to give. People often ask, well, what dose? I mean, if you are looking at mother tincture, you know, true herbalists you know, mother tincture, then literally you can be looking at, you know, half a mil in a bowl of water a day seems to be enough to affect a great response. Remember, those tinctures are full of alcohol to preserve, you know, it's the way they've extracted the nutrient, the valuable part of the plant. And so some people would say, please add that to warm or hot water just to evaporate off the excess alcohol.
Oh, that's a great tip.
Okay, yeah, because it is quite— it's quite a whack if you've taken a shot of whiskey.
I think, sure, you'd be all right with half a mil, but if you were dropping that, the water would have to be over 70 degrees, whatever alcohol goes off at, is it 70, or maybe it starts at less than that, but temperature, yeah. All right, cool, that's a great tip. And, uh, and so you can drop that into the water. It'd be great to practice a little bit of Zoo Pharmacozy here and just see if your dog will select this tiny little drop of echinacea water compared to his normal filtered water. Yeah, it'd be really interesting to see if they are that cute that they can say that I really need that stuff. Okay, so what about any marshmallow, slippery elm? I mean, if you're tearing the throat off yourself, would any of those be good?
Honey, I would definitely say honey is a great one just to say. Okay, manuka honey can be great. Okay, local honey is generally we talk about for allergies okay, where there's hay fever type symptoms and things like that, because it adds that level of desensitization to the local pollens. Yeah, but again, it has to be seasonal because, you know, it's not just about being local honey, it's about, well, what season was that honey produced? Oh yeah, that's going to be relative to the pollen at that point.
Of course.
Yeah, so, so, you know, have a little look at that. You know, there's no point in being packed with heather pollens if it's not healthy.
That's a really good tip, yeah. Like, I get my eggs and honey from a lady down the road, Margaret. Hi, I know you're not listening. So, but she always has eggs, and she has the guy who I went to school with who grows his own bees, and he's got this great honey. But, you know, they keep a small stock of it and it's constantly replenished. So that's good, because if your dog's sensitivities pop up in autumn, well, then it's something possibly around that time that's bothering them. So the honey that's been sitting in the press for the last 6 months mightn't be— it won't be as good. That's a really good tip. Love that, Brian. Bloody hell, you're coming up with the We're coming up with the goods today. So Ben, what about like, so they're the sort of natural treatments and stuff that we can do, but what about getting to the whole vaccine debate here where we say, what is the point? Tell me, what is the point if there's so many infectious causes of cough? And to be fair, you know, we seem to be so successful at treating most of these coughs ourselves. Where do you stand on the vaccination for, and how do they pick a vaccination? How do they pick which ones to vaccinate my dog from?
Right, okay, let's— so one of the biggest debates within the vaccine, or vaccinosis, the disease from vaccines, um, uh, element of health is down to what's added to the vaccine. Okay, so what we call the adjuvants and the, um, the preservatives. And these are the things that really It can cause irritations to the immune system, to excite the immune system, inflammation, and also contain some of the things like mercury salts like thiomersal. So that's what we really worry about. But actually, for the majority of intranasal kennel coughs or Bordetella vaccines, none of that is there.
Okay, interesting.
What they rely on is that they are using a bacterium which is usually found in a different species. So they use a pig one in this particular case for, for the, um, I think 90% of the, the dog vaccines. Certainly within the UK, they use the porcine version because it's limited to 2 to 3 passages through the mucous membranes enough to actually stimulate the system and effectively provoke an immune response locally with the appropriate local antibodies in the mucous layer.
Okay, to any type of Bordetella, so including then the dog type of Bordetella. That's very smart.
Okay, and it has no preservatives in it. It's freeze-dried and then you dilute it purely with sterile water to then put the drops up the nose.
Interesting.
Not something that vets love because you know how hard it can be to give that. And a couple of tips for giving it is one, we say just warm it out of the fridge. Don't give it straight out of the fridge. You just allow it to reach room temperature. We cover their eyes, we tip their heads back, and we dribble from, you know, without putting any big stuff in front of their face because that's when they start to panic. Sometimes even wrapping a towel around the head, just leaving the nose out, yeah, can be a great tip. And actually, even if you as an owner who the dog trusts, rather than having a strange smell of a stranger coming towards them, can do that procedure of just dribbling it down each nostril It's great, it does. Okay, so the downside to this is because of how we are reliant on that immunity being provoked, of it being local antibodies within the mucous layers, so the IgAs, IgMs, you know, the secretory antibodies, then actually the immunity doesn't tend to last. It's about 12 to 15 months and pretty much that seems to be—
I had that question waiting because this is a virus and vaccination—
it's a bacteria.
Bordetella is a bacteria?
Yes, it is. It's the same as whooping cough in children, okay. Bordetella, okay, pertussis, okay, is this Bordetella bacterium can cause whooping cough symptoms in across breeds, across species okay, um, and a really irritating cough, okay, and that whooping constant cough that can go on for hours at a time and lasts for months as an infection. This is why they chose that one particular species to vaccinate against, because of how debilitating it can be.
If they have to protect against one of them, if there's one you don't want, you don't want Bordetella. I can't believe I went up to this point thinking Bordetella that was a virus, but it's actually a bacteria. So that's how much I know. A side point on whooping cough, very interesting when we're talking from probiotics thing, that there was these French researchers that are very convinced that whooping cough is to do with your gut flora. It's pathogenic bacteria getting in there, Pertussis, and what it does is it's starting to produce this reaction in your child because children that have whooping cough are overfed because we're trying to keep them quiet. So when they're quiet, what do we do? We give them more milk because they're so, so distressed with this cough. And when you give them milk, they're quiet. So it could be that this is— well, it is— this is what the bacteria is trying to do, is making you cough to get this. This bacteria says, I want more milk.
Actually, what you've got there is a dysbiosis. Yes, if you've got a weakness in your gut or your microbiome, yeah, you allow pathogenic bacteria, you know, alien bacteria, to multiply to excess and cause a problem.
Yeah, and then you feed them, particularly sugary buttermilk, you feed them that and they get what they want to get: sugar, get sugar, get sugar, get sugar, induce more cough, boom, the kids quiet, get sugar. So kids with whooping cough are overweight, are far more likely to be overweight, and probiotics were proven effective in treating whooping cough. So I just thought that was fascinating. It's like it kind of— anyway, going off on one a little bit there. We're back to Bordetella.
So let's talk about that, because there are around the world, there are different approaches. There is actually an injectable version around the world, but it's not very effective. Injectable version of, of, um, and it's been around for 20, 30 years, but it's not very effective. This is why we tend to give the intranasal one, because it is so effective but only against Bordetella.
Yes, okay, okay, that's interesting.
So that's, that's the, the actual vaccine debate. Yeah, okay, people will say, but we've given this, this, um, Bordetella vaccine and then the dogs have come down with a cough. Yeah, and then it's passed around. But we're back to the scenario of multiple infections. Yeah, if you give a minor infection with an alien bacteria that can't actually multiply, but your dog is already harboring one of the other infectious causes of cough, you can get it so that the immune system is concentrating on— opens the door and the other virus becomes a problem, or the other bacteria becomes a problem.
Because that's interesting, because what you've dealt with the first bit there very adequately now, which is great because I'm totally straight on that. You are vaccinating to Bordetella because you're worried about Bordetella. It's not something you want. The vaccine is very effective for Bordetella, but there's a lot of different causes of cough. So that will clear it up a lot for people. The second thing that comes after that is, okay, we understand now that it's porcine-based, it's pig-based, which is very interesting, which means it's not going to get to the infectious state. It's not going to infect the animal cells and replicate. Okay, that's very interesting. Then why do people— people will say, which you're just touching on there. You give kennel cough and they shed kennel cough, and other dogs get kennel cough from my dog. Get— I'll take away the word kennel there. They give the kennel cough vaccine and then suddenly my— either my dog is coughing or other dogs because the dog is shedding. Can the dog shed virus if it's been given the kennel cough vaccine?
So the question comes, one, proving which virus they're shedding. Because if we've just done as we've said, we've opened the door and they get another latent infection that's coming out, and that could be, you know, another influenza virus, a coronavirus, a, uh, you know, a Pasteurella that they are spreading around, okay? And that's causing the problem.
And definitely not the kennel cough, because the kennel cough was a pig-based, uh, antigen that just can't— that, uh, viral that can't Can't replicate?
Well, it can replicate, but only about 2 to 3 times before it becomes so, you know, there's just not the right stuff in there.
So it can replicate. Does that mean your dog can't get it?
It can, but it's not something that's going to cause significant disease. It's not replicating enough to get— remember at the beginning we talked about an incubation period from infection to actually symptom picture? Okay, and generally it won't get to a point where it can cause significant symptoms. Okay, okay, because it's died out too quickly.
Cool.
Okay, yeah, of course, you know, if you've put drops up the nose of a bacterium, you're going to be able to detect in the mucus that comes back out of that nose. Yeah, of course, that material, there's no way of getting around that. Yeah, the question comes, is that likely to cause an infection that will go through an incubation period and spread to another dog?
Highly unlikely. No, nearly would be the answer, but highly unlikely anyway. Okay, cool, that clears that up because I was often of the belief that, you know, I would definitely join the posse that said kennels, you know, my boarding kennels is insisting on kennel cough and yet I can bring the dog down the next day and he's infectious with kennel cough. I definitely would have subscribed to that idea. I thought, well, that makes sense to me. If you're going to put cough into the dog, I don't— I mean, what I would have assumed that there was some sort of connection on. It's a live virus that goes up the nose, or is it a modified dead virus?
It's a live bacteria. So it's live.
It's alive.
But so this is where, because of this latent, you know, the possibility of latent co-infections going on, this is why as a practice we will generally say, look, please give it about 7 days before your dog's likely to go into kennels, purely and simply so that any other latent infections get a chance to come out, do their thing, be got rid of before you then subject them to going into a kennel and mixing with other dogs.
Yeah, that's interesting. Jeez, you're really highlighting some things here. This— so the question would be like, so where are you, Bren, on— of two questions, okay, I'm gonna ask them both next, I'm gonna forget the other one. So the first question is, where are you on kennel cough vaccine? Do you think dogs need it? And secondly, have you seen many dogs suffer badly with Bordetella? So where are you on your opinion on the need to vaccinate dogs annually with, with this KC vaccine, in inverted commas? And secondly, have you seen in your clinic many dogs suffer badly from Bordetella?
So Bordetella, I have seen dogs suffer badly, but it's not many, okay? Literally half a dozen in my career, okay? Of, you know, dogs really severely affected, but it's devastating to see. I mean, it's a horrible, horrible disease.
Okay.
Um, and, you know, once it gets established, it can be so hard to get rid of, and they are left almost with the long COVID, you know, residual cough and respiratory issues. Um, and so, you know, it is really important to understand that, and, you know, the heat stroke stuff, you know, if they get it in the summertime, you know, all of the stuff that could be compounding around that means that actually the severity versus my interpretation of the relative risks means that if, if my dogs were going to go into an area that I can't control, so they're going to a dog walker to look after them over the summer, or they're going into kennels you know, yeah, yeah, okay, then I would definitely consider it.
Nice.
Now there is circumstances, there are some other alternatives that have been out there, and certainly in the face of disease, there was some work done by Chris Day and John Saxton in a kennel environment, not specifically with Border Terrier and it was done in RSPCA kennels in Leeds, actually quite locally, and they looked at half of the kennels they treated with a placebo and half of the kennels they treated with a nosode made from the disease of the dogs that started to cough.
Homeopathic nosode? Yeah.
Okay, and what they did is they reintroduced that and massively reduced the morbidity, the illness levels within the dogs, cut out the mortality rate. Okay, now it cuts it down by about 50%, which for a nose aid, you know, where most people would say there's nothing in there, it's traumatic. Brilliant.
Okay, publish that, Brian, by any chance?
I think they did back in the mid-'80s.
God, I hope so.
So have a look at that. But it was something that when it sort of spawned this whole thing about nose ointment, and people started to make nose ointments out of vaccines, which is not the same thing, okay? And they start to give them as a preventative rather than in the face of disease. And so again, that's different. And they've also proposing that if they weaned off the, the frequent dosing that they were getting in the kennel environment in that circumstance to actually, well, if we give one a month, it's still going to be protective, they're getting antibodies or something like that. There was no evidence for that. And so extremely late—
okay, that's interesting. So the no-salts don't stimulate any sort of antibody response in the animal? They are—
you need to keep the body to respond initially at that point appropriately to the infection that they're expecting.
So you'd be giving no-salts— is that the case for all no-salts? Is that the way you use nosodes?
So this specifically, when you're giving nosodes in the face of an outbreak of disease, that is how you should give them. Okay. Because if you start to give nosodes just generally, well, from a homeopathic point of view, you'll start to get— this is how we look at how remedies act. Yeah, this is proven. So you can start to stimulate symptoms by giving remedies on a frequent basis continually for a long period of time. So you've got to be cautious that you understand the method of treatment if you're going to go down that route, and don't just assume that, oh well, I've heard it's protective, therefore I'll just do this protocol.
Can you just buy your nose holds online and lash them into your dog?
So there are, um, Bordetella nose holds, um, that are available. You've got to be aware if you're going to choose a Bordetella nose hold and there's a viral breakout of parainfluenza, it's not going to work. Yeah, okay. If you've got a Pasteurella that's going through kennels and you've got a parainfluenza nose, it's not going to work. Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's really important. So there are options out there. Some people will give mixed cough nose odes, so from all of those bacteria and viruses, and give them Or they will use things like Spongia or Drosera, which are two specific cough remedies, okay, which can be really effective for that irritating cough.
Okay, as a preventative?
No, as a treatment.
As a treatment, okay, sorry. Okay, right, as a treatment. So you're waiting, and if, you know, shit happens, then you'll start to deal with it then with those?
And so then you dive in. So if you start to treat them, you dive in with immune stimulants and, you know, all of the things. So Vetri DMG, dimethylglycine, that is, sorry, through to N-acetylcysteine we've talked about in the past. There's a few other things that can help— echinacea, you know, vitamin C's, you know, all of those things that we would talk about to try and help the immune system activate as quickly as possible and get over the infection.
Yeah, so your dogs are very sociable dogs. Do you put kennel cough vaccine in your dogs?
So only if they go— if we're going away and they're not staying with family. So we've been fortunate enough to the majority of times, but there have been 3 or 4 times that we have given them the kennel cough vaccine and they've gone into a kennel.
Okay, and like, so is this the same? So, you know, you explain that it's different antibodies that are stimulated because it's a bacteria that's got a certain amount of time. So just Well, without going too far into the leptospirosis debate, you know, we say that the vaccines to viruses last, but vaccines to bacteria, you know, they've got a certain shelf life, a certain amount of time. So you should be putting in Kennel Cough and leptospirosis every year because that's another bacteria. And would the same argument not be for that? Like, leptospirosis can be nasty should dogs get it, but to be fair, it's pretty rare. And yes, You know, but you couldn't, you wouldn't stand— okay, we're getting into leptospirosis, maybe we should—
I mean, I've got to understand it's not just necessarily antibodies, there is also cell-mediated immunity. What we find is whereas viruses often, because they're much smaller and they respond, or sorry, the infections respond much better to antibody attack, okay, as in they are killed off much quicker through antibody attack, Whereas actually when we come to bacteria, often the cell-mediated attacks are the ones which require the immune system cells to encompass the bacteria, to recognize the bacteria, to actually kill those bacteria by cells attacking them. Yeah, are much more important. So if you talk about, you know, CD4, CD8 counts, you know, when we're talking about certain infections, you're looking at cell-mediated immunity, and those are things that can't be measured cheaply through, you know, antibody tests or anything like that. So it's much more complex.
Interesting.
And it's also a little bit different in how long that memory lasts as well.
Okay, cool. Very interesting. Quite relevant to today's issues that are going on. And so, yeah, so concluding thoughts then on chemical— like, actually, you've already given us your concluding because the concluding thought would be, what would you do? And if there is a situation where you think your dog is going to be in daycare or you're going away and he's not coming with you, then you might consider it. And as you're saying, it is very safe. It doesn't come with all the baggage that I thought it did, and it seems pretty safe from the other dogs in the park point of view, although you might just be wary for the few days after because latent infections it is going to be a little bit of a nudge to the immune system. And so like you're saying, while the immune system is distracted, perhaps something else can come in, which could be another cough, which would really throw the cat amongst the pigeons because you go, oh, it's the bloody vaccine. Well, you go, well, that's pretty unlikely because this vaccine is very unlikely to cause a cough in the dog. It just doesn't get the time to cook and get ready to replicate. That is all really, really interesting because if that's new to me, that has got to be new to a good few people, or I am way behind my reading on what's going going on. That is so good. And so do you recommend, Bren, when people come into your clinic, is that a recommendation each year that a kennel cough is to be considered? Or do you like— how do you let them decide? How do we— how can we decide anything? I just—
well, look, you know, I ask, I ask the questions. You've got, you know, WSAVA specifically, they don't say it's a core vaccine, okay? It is not something that needs to be given every year to every dog. It definitely isn't. And I don't give it every year to my dogs you know, because I've just stated there is only certain circumstances. If they mix with a couple of dogs, you know, they're reasonably sociable, but actually they're working dogs, they tend to pay attention to me. And if another dog comes along, they might give them a brief sniff, but then they just go, yeah, whatever, you're a dog, and I'll carry on with my owner. So yeah, from a point of view of if you've got a dog who's very sociable, constantly going to daycare, constantly going to kennels, then you've got to risk assess that they're more likely to need that protection.
Okay, okay.
If they are dogs that are very distant, bit remote, not that sociable, the likelihood that your dog needs it— I would not give them the vaccine because they could pick up one of those latent infections and start having another issue. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, why would you do that? You don't need to stimulate their system. Yeah, if they aren't at risk.
Yeah, interesting. Okay, cool. And then if you were considering the vaccine, it'd be a yearly thing because there's a— it just wanes. If that's how long it lasts for. That's really, really interesting. I think we should wrap it up there. What we thought was good, that this— that was just—
I thought it was going to be 20 minutes.
Yeah, we did. Oh, bloody hell. But like, there was some serious questions answered down. I'm after writing them all down here because I want to blog about it. Like, this is This is just a really high— but guys, uh, just to, just to kind of push a couple of things again. The first thing is the great news that is, uh, Rodney and Karen are going to be joining us, uh, on the 31st of August. So, uh, that is, um, coming up in— not, not Tuesday, but the following Tuesday, uh, 31st of August. 31st of August. Yeah. So, and it's going to be a two-parter because the first part, me, Bren, and Nick just want to talk to these guys. We want to learn a bit about them that goes beyond their Wikipedia pages. And there's just so much to chat about because a lot of things, you know, it is as well as their book. And we'll be talking about the book, The Forever Dog, that they've just written. But the process of bringing that out, guys, is just pure emotional turmoil. So we want to dig into that a bit with them, see how they feel after, how's it going. But then we have a second show where it's just going to be straight into the nitty-gritty of stuff that myself, Brandon, Nick have come up with when we're reading the book that wags our tail and it's like, tell us more about this so we can discuss it. That's going to be the real juice on the book as well. So we're going to separate that into a second part because 45 minutes is enough for anyone. So that would be a two-parter on that. And secondly, if you enjoy the content tonight, guys, please check out our Patreon page here. It's patreon.com/rawpetmedics. You can see it coming up there. This really helps us. Like, we're just after giving an hour of our time picking Bren's brains, and like, this is one of the top vets in the country, and we are lucky to get this information because no doubt it has straightened out kennel cough for hundreds and thousands of people. We get thousands of people watching our videos now in a week, so it really helps us, guys, if you can do patreon.com so we can keep people like Bren and Nick in the seats so we can keep picking their brains. And it really helps, so appreciate it. Price of a cup of coffee, if you have it, per month is great. That's all we're asking. And if you don't have it, don't be stressing at all, you know. But if you do, we'd very much appreciate it, you know.
So I just want to get those two to all of those people that have probably commented live. Um, you know, we'll be keeping an eye on those comments and giving a little bit of feedback and stuff. And it's great to hear from you. I hope you've had a great week and I'll see you on the 31st.
Yes, absolutely. Talk soon, guys.
Cheers.
