A Raleigh veterinarian recommends keeping your pet's shots up-to-date before boarding it with other animals. | Adobe Stock
A Raleigh veterinarian recommends keeping your pet's shots up-to-date before boarding it with other animals. | Adobe Stock
Some people are choosy about how many vaccinations their pets get, and some brush off the suggested vaccines, opting instead to only go for the most important ones like rabies protection.
But you might not be doing your pet any favors by skimping on shots.
Those who have elected to not get their dogs protected against kennel cough could be in for a wake-up call, as the canine respiratory disease is spreading across the Tar Heel State.
"It's a bad cough," veterinarian Page Wages of Care First Oberlin Animal Hospital in Raleigh said in an ABC 11 News report. “The owners bring them in and say the dog is choking on something, and it just starts suddenly. They act like they're choking, and then they just get sicker and sicker.”
The omission of certain vaccines also makes it difficult to board your pet.
The disorder is colloquially called "kennel cough" because it’s a contagious disease that dogs often pick up when they are boarded or in "doggy day care" facilities.
Kennel cough, or canine infectious respiratory disease complex, requires treatment or it can become fatal, Wages said.
With the Fourth of July holiday coming up, people looking to board their pets are urged to make sure their pet's vaccines are up-to-date. The minimum recommended vaccines are for influenza, Bordetella and distemper shots. Those need to be completed at least two weeks before boarding.
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