George, a Rescue Dog: Day Four
George is a 10 year old toy poodle mix, who was dumped by his owners at the Baytown Animal Shelter. He was found there by Lou Sisk, and Holly Dool found him rescue with the Blind Dog Rescue Alliance. I’m fostering George and updating his story to show that rescue dogs straight from the shelter make wonderful pets.
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On Sunday morning, I decided that I wanted to do two things with George: 1) get him a harness and collar, and 2) try to alleviate his coughing from the kennel cough. The first goal was easy, of course. I went to Patty’s Pet Depot in the morning to drop my other dogs off for grooming. While I was there, I picked up a super soft and gentle harness. Using a neck collar or choke chain to walk a dog is a horrible thing to do. Not only does it hurt, but it also can damage a dog’s throat! In George’s case, with kennel cough, it would hurt him even more to pull him around by constricting his throat, because he’s been coughing so much.
George’s new soft and gentle harness!
So I got the harness, and I also got George a collar that I will put on him, loosely, when he goes on transport. I got the tag engraved with him name and the number of his rescue group.
George’s new collar and tag.
I got him a nice soft new bed to match his purple harness, but I’ve wrapped that in a garbage bag and then put sheets over top of it. Because he has kennel cough, I don’t want him to contaminate the bed, and I am washing and changing his sheets every day anyway, so the germs don’t spread. I also picked up a nice warm sweater for him, because he’s headed up north and little old bones get cold up there. He’s going to look really handsome wearing it!
My second goal of the day was to try to alleviate some of the terrible coughing that George is going through. My sister Dawn helped me with that. Our vet put George on all the medicine that will help him with the cough, but it takes 2-3 weeks for a dog to recover from kennel cough. So Dawn helped me research some holistic ways to try to soothe George in the meantime. If you’ve never heard a dog with kennel cough, it’s really rough. The cough is a dry hack, although sometimes they cough up puss, saliva, or blood. I’ve actually covered the floor around George in newspaper so I can just roll up the paper and replace it every day, because of the mucus and blood.
Anyway, yesterday we read that three things can help alleviate the coughing, besides medicines. First, honey helps, the same way it helps humans, by coating and soothing the throat. Second, coconut oil apparently works similarly, but also kills a lot of germs too. Finally, a vaporizer also helps to calm the inflamed tissues. I decided to try the honey and the coconut oil. So I put a little bit of coconut oil in George’s dinner. Then later, I added a little drop of honey in his water.
I was going to wait to see how the honey and coconut oil worked after today before I decided to turn on a vaporizer, but after listening to poor George cough through the night last night, I got up this morning and put the vaporizer in his room right after I brought him in from doing his business outside. So let’s hope that some of that coughing calms down and George is able to rest peacefully for most of the day!
