It irks my soul when I read online that tracheal collapse in dogs is not life threatening or "dogs can live a normal life with tracheal collapse... just don't put collars on them". It miselads people into thinking that it's not serious. Tracheal collapse is congenital and more common in toy breeds. It's degenerative, meaning the cartilage rings that keep the wind pipe (trachea) open weakens and deforms over time... eventually collapsing in on itself when it reaches a severe state. I kept wondering... why is it being shared that tracheal collapses are not life-threatening? It occured to me that it likely has to do with the age your dog starts to show symptoms... if your dog starts showing symptoms of collapsed trachea at age 6 or 7 y.o., chances are that they'll have died from other causes well before the collapsed trachea had a chance to weaken to a severe state. If this is the case, then yeah... I guess you can claim it's "no big deal" beacuse you can manage the symptoms (coughing, hacking) with some cough meds and steroids and your dog would have lived a pretty comfy life until it died of another cause. But what about those pups that start showing symptoms early in life? My pup showed signs of tracheal collapse at 5 months of age and we had to put her to sleep last month at 10 years of age. That's ten years worth of honking, hacking and some coughing (increased as she got older), which slowly wore down the cartilage rings holding her trachea open. She was only 10 years old... I say ONLY because Chihuahua's are known to last 15-20 yrs. My dogs tracheal collapse got so severe that it started collapsing in on itself in the middle of the night and she would faint from lack of oxygen to the brain! She would make these horrible, screetching sounds and a little part of me died everytime I saw her go through that. I rushed her to the vet and he basically told me that there was nothing they could do. Her trachea was collapsing in multiple areas, she was too small and old to be a candidate for surgery (the surgery is not so great btw...look it up)... so I went home, built her a little oxygen tank she could sleep in to prevent her from passing out at night but she only got to use it two nights. I woke up one morning and noticed her breaths were very short and strained with this high pitched gasping sound. She was like a fish out of water. It was horrible to watch and I had to make the decision to put her to sleep that same afternoon. My poor little girl... I'll always wonder if I could've extended her life if I would've known more about her condition. Unfortunately, I learned a little too late.
Here are a few things I wish my vet would've told me when he first diagnosed her with tracheal collapse instead of brushing it off as a "condition dogs can live with":
- Those goose-like honking sounds she made sometimes when she inhaled and exhaled (the ones I described as "cute piglet sounds") were actually the sounds of air skipping as it was forced up and down her trachea, which was inflammating the trachea and speeding up the process of cartilage deterioration/ deformation.
- Anything that causes the honking or coughing or gagging should be avoided such as too much exercise... obsesity/ over weight... heat... stress. Why? because it's inflammating the trachea and speeding up the process of cartilage deterioration/deformation.
- Dogs with tracheal collapse slowly lose their ability to release heat. Exposing them to heat= panting= strain and further weakening of the trachea. Towards the end of her life, my own body heat was even causing my dog to pant after only sitting next to me for 10 mins.
- Dogs w/ tracheal collapse should be followed by a specialist familiar with tracheal collapse w/ yearly checkup visits.
It's too late for me and my Lilly, but I hope someone can benefit from this information.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/cieya3/tracheal_collapse_slow_suffocation/
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