[JessicaB]

It's been a while...

Bailey started to have issues breathing a few months ago. She would have to stop whatever she was doing and kind of do this sucking inward thing. It kind of reminded me of an asthma attack. It would only last a few seconds and she would be fine after. At first it was just every once and a while when she would be really excited or when she would be rollerblading with me. My mother's Pappillon (sp?) does what I thought was the same thing and her vet told her it was due to allergies so I wasn't too worried about it at the time.

Well, I took her to a boarding kennel last weekend. The day I brought her home she was doing this gasping thing A LOT! Almost every 30 minutes or so, regardless of what she was doing, and they seemed to last a lot longer. She also was sneezing, sniffeling, and congested (clear, not yellow or infected looking) which she hadn't been before boarding.

I immediately took her to the vet the next day. They checked her out, found no sort of sickness. They said that it could be "reverse sneezing" which is apparantly common in dogs. I didn't think that was it. She also agreed that it could be from allergies. She mentioned it could also be a collapsing airway or something like that, but she thought it was unlikely because rubbing her throat didn't trigger it.

So she put Bailey on some antihistamines. I tried that for two days which only helped a little with the sniffeling and congestion, not the gasping. I found her on the couch stiff as a board gasping, freaked out, and took her back to the vet yesterday. They checked her again, took her off the antihistamine, put her on a cough suppresant and sort of bronchial airway opening medicine. Today, I am still seeing minimal improvement. She is still having gasping episodes and sniffeling.

The gasping sounds almost kind of like inward snorting. She strains really hard and it gives me the impression that she is struggling to get the air in to her lungs. The snorting sound makes it sound like something is closing up. Maybe it is the trachial collapse thing? Does anyone know anything about this? I am not sure what to do.

On top of all that, she has a small lump on her belly where you would think her belly button would be. It's been there ever since I can remember and I thought it was a belly button. The vet checked it out and told it me it was most likely some sort of hernia. Either an umbillical hernia, a hernia of fat cells, or an intestinal hernia. OR... a tumor. So now I have to have her sedated so they can go in explore it and hopefully repair it. That's going to cost an arm and a leg.

If anyone has any words of wisdom for any of this, it would be greatly appreciated. I also took a small video of Bailey gasping. If anyone wants to look at it to get some ideas, let me know and I will email it to you.