Is your dog having a cold? Or is he or she in the dog runny nose stage?
When your dog is having a runny nose, it could mean many possible things and it would all depend on what caused it. Runny noses can come from mostly germs and bacteria but your dog having it can also be a very big problem for there are symptoms that would match up even cancer.The poor thing may even experience their runny nose much worse than we do. Dogs are very reliant to their noses and when it just gets clogged up, a big part of their body is out of order. They have 220 million smell receptors while we only have 5 million and knowing that they most likely live up their days smelling, we can’t help but get worried about what might even happen.To make sure that we know what our dog is experiencing and how it can be treated, let’s start getting into the details of Dog Runny Nose…
The Common Possible Causes of Your Dog’s Runny Nose Problems and Their Symptoms
For us humans, we can easily go through our runny nose problems with just a few days and some medicine. Unless you decide to let your immune system take care of it all. For dogs, however, dogs who have mucus coming out with the color green, yellow and cloudy with a terrible smell can be something to worry about. If ever so, please contact your vet right away.
The Common Possible Causes are:
Your dog must be allergic to flower pollen, certain food, specific medicine or drugs, mites, spores, chemicals, or human dander (the skin we shed).
- A Blockage
There must be something that your pet has been smelling and that this might have made its way to his nostrils and blocked the passageway such as seeds or a piece of grass. The signs that this happened is that your dog is frequently sneezing and pawing at his nose. Worst cases are that he or she has started to nosebleed.
- Infection
If your dog has been letting out pus, then this could mean that your dog has caught an infection either bacterial, fungal or viral. Signs include nose bleeding, coughing, choking and a terrible smell.
- Tumors or Polyps
Polyps, or nasal polyps, is when your dog’s mucus-producing glands have grown more than normal which results into a nasal tumor. The signs for when dogs have nasal tumors are the decreasing need to eat, nose bleeding, letting out pus, noisy breathing, swelling nose or a bulge of the side of their nose.
Such problems are treated with surgery. If you think your pet is having nasal tumors, seek attention from your dog’s veterinarian immediately.
- Distemper
When a dog is having distemper, it gives your dog a sticky and yellow-colored nose snot or discharge. This is just a part of what distemper gives your dog. Distemper can cause your dog to have fever, pneumonia, convulsions or even twitching. If that is the case, contact your vet immediately.
- Cleft Palate
Also known as fistula, is when the two sides of your dog’s palate don’t combine. There is also the oral-nasal fistula which is a hole between your dog’s nose and mouth that could be caused by tooth decay, injury, infection or a recent surgery.
However, surgery is also a method of treating this problem.
The Symptom You should look out for
When it comes to a runny nose, everyone knows that it is the clogging of the nasal passageway with snot. However, runny noses in dogs are not exactly like ours and can even concern you the most depending on the present symptoms your dog has. Provided below are symptoms that might go with your dog’s runny nose and let’s see what matches its causes above.
The Options of Symptoms are:
- Nose bleeding
- The decrease of need to eat
- Noisy Breathing
- Pus coming out of the nose
- Sticky and yellow Snot
- Twitching
- Producing snot after eating
- Mucus
- Bulge of the side of the nose
- Pawing at the nose
- Fever
- Pneumonia
- Sneezing
- Coughing
- Inflammation of the eyes
- Terrible Odor
- Choking
- Hole between your dog’s mouth and nose
Which of these symptoms are found present in your dog according to your observations? If you have checked more than one of these symptoms, be sure to visit the vet to clarify or to diagnose your dog. Some symptoms could match…
- A Blockage – nose bleeding, sneezing, and pawing at their own nose.
- Infection – nose discharging mucus, pus, nose bleeding, coughing, terrible odor and choking.
- Polyps and Tumors – Nose bleeding, discharge of pus, mucus, noisy breathing, the decrease of need to eat, and a bulge on the side of their nose.
- Nostril Problems – Noisy breathing Distemper – Snot is sticky and colored yellow, fever, pneumonia, twitching, and convulsions.
- Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever – Nose bleeding, coughing, inflammation of the eyes, pain, and high fever.
- Cleft Palate or Fistula – producing snot after eating and a hole between your dog’s nose and mouth.
Do some of these matches your dog’s observed symptoms? If so, then be sure to schedule an early appointment with your dog’s veterinarian for these options are not to be taken lightly. They are from mild to fatal and may harm your dog even further if not tended to.
Conclusion
For some pet owners, such situations should be left unattended. It is only because we compare our sicknesses with our dog’s sicknesses when dogs have a whole different system than ours. It also happens that medicine has evolved and improved much more for our human bodies than for dogs. So when your dog is experiencing something similar to us, don’t think of it as a human, try to think of how your dog would truly feel in that condition.
My advice is that you have your pet checked three to four times a year to make sure they stay in good shape for the rest of their lives. If there is anything suspicious or different with your dog’s actions lately, also be there to observe and see what is truly going on with your fur baby. The sooner you notice what’s wrong, the better. Well, there you go, guys! That would be the end of this article.
I hope you guys find this helpful and that you are able to find out what your dog’s problem truly is. Thank you!