Collapsed Trachea in Small Dogs

A collapsing or collapsed trachea in a small dog is caused by a weakening in the rings of cartilage that hold the trachea open so that your dog can breath.  Some dogs are born with this weakened condition, others develop the condition with age. While the condition is not limited to small dogs, it is most common in small dogs.

The trachea in dogs, humans and most other mammals is the "tube" that runs from the nose and throat that carries air to and from the lungs...it can also be called the windpipe.  When it is collapsing or collapsed, dogs make an unusual sound caused by what some call backwards coughing...a sound like a honk.

Many dogs have this condition occasionally or chronically and live normal healthy lives.  If your dog is "honking" often and over an extended period of time, please do see your veterinarian as he or she will teach you how to manage the condition and perhaps suggest medications that will open up the breathing.  Surgery is not often needed.

If the characteristic cough is just occasional, your dog should be fine, this is up to you to determine.

Here are a couple of things we do:

When I (Aspen) cough like this, my owner gently lifts my head and strokes under my neck...she didn't read about doing this anywhere, it's just something she did one day, and it helped.  Maybe it helped me relax, maybe it helped open the trachea, we don't know, it just worked...but it's just a gentle lift and very gentle stroking, nothing more.

DO NOT walk a dog using  a regular collar with this condition, use a harness.  In fact, do this anyway with a small dog as a collar could contribute to causing the problem.

Do more research on the condition online, there is quite a bit of information out there, and thank you for visiting, we hope we helped you learn a bit more about tracheal collapse and hope you find help with your dogs collapsed trachea.

Saving Favorite Animal and Pet Sites Online

I've discovered a new place to save all of my favorite pet and animal sites. The site is called Clipix and as the name would indicate, it is a "visual" way of saving places that you want to revisit in an organized way.

I joined clipix about a week ago, and have set up files on my favorite topics. To get started, you open an account which just takes a few minutes, then go to your "clipboard". On the clipboard you will find boxes with titles of some popular categories. You can change the titles to anything you like. You can also add more boxes to the clipboard as you discover sites that interest you on different subjects. And if things get really busy on your clipboard, you can set up "multiboards" and put similar clipboards within them to further organize things.

Since I am new, I've set up some basic boards on some of my favorite things, including animals, books I'd like to read, health and nutrition, recipes, gift ideas...and I'm sure I'll be adding many more.

When you go to your main page, you can click on the title of any one of your clipboards, which will open up a page so that you can see all files in that folder. As I said, I've just started, but here is a picture of the folder I started on animals and pets:



Here is how to save your information to a clipboard. When you join, you "drag" a little "clip" button up into your toolbar if you are using Firefox, or you save it to your toolbar as instructed if you are using Internet Explorer. Then when you are on a page that you like and want to save, you simply click on the clip button in the toolbar, a window will open, you choose a picture that will remind you of the site, label it if you like, and save it into a file that you choose from a drop-down menu. So simple!

I am "happynutritionist" on clipix, when you join, look for me, or tell us in a comment who you are so we can all find you...tell us how you are using Clipix.

 

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Fleas in the Winter?

In the northeast, we are having one of the warmest winters that we've had in a long time. It's nice to have such mild weather, but one thing that my owner didn't think about was the fact that the fleas and ticks are living longer than they usually do. In fact, we stopped doing my flea treatments, and now we are trying to get rid of fleas that are in the house.

This is not fun for any of us. But it's a good reminder that just because the calendar says it's winter in the northern states, it doesn't mean that the fleas are gone unless you have really had a good prolonged hard freeze which we have not. It's a lesson learned the hard way.

Wish us well in ridding ourselves of the fleas naturally. We will be back to let you know what works, and our progress.