'Just a cold' won't cause that much mucous. This could rapidly develop into pneumonia which is often times fatal in dogs. There are bugs going around especially in overcrowded environments that there are no vaccines for, so just because your dogs are up to date on vaccines, you can't assume that what they have caught isn't a serious illness. Also, most vaccines do not cover all the variable vectors of any given disease... only the most common at the time the vaccine was developed.
I apologize if I sound harsh... trust me I learned from experience when I almost lost my oldest Yorkie last spring. He started out with a clear runny nose, and within 2-3 days it turned cloudy and intensified so much that he could barely breathe, and no way could he eat. I didn't know a small dog could even produce that much mucous.
He was sleeping as I walked past him, but I turned around to check him, and Thank God I did.. his tongue and membranes were turning dark purple! He was giving up. So I held him and got him breathing again, and had the phone in my other hand calling any vet's office that would answer to get him seen ASAP. His temp soared to over 105.0 F.
Even after being seen by the vet, they didn't give me any hope that he would survive, and they sent him home with me. On the right antibiotic, I saw improvement by the next day... he tried to eat a little bit and drank some water. He did survive and I learned never to ignore cold like symptoms in a dog.
If the antibiotics don't seem to be working within 24-48 hours, call your vet for a change... they can only guess (an educated guess) at what will be successful in killing the bug unless they do a culture, but one really doesn't have the time to wait when treating these types of illnesses.
Hopefully if you explain the situation to the ER vet, and you just want to start him on the antibiotics then go to your regular vet, maybe they'll go easy on you. Either way, younger and older dogs are more at risk, so I would get him seen ASAP. |