Should my dog keep going to daycare after kennel cough?

The first rule is the easy one. Keep a dog with a cough, sneezing, a runny nose or a fever at home, and call us before the next daycare, Dogtown Academy or overnight booking. The University of Tennessee's veterinary college compares it to keeping a sick child home from school, and the AVMA says the way to stop spread is to keep the dog away from other dogs until it has fully recovered. Call your vet, describe the cough and when it started, and let the Dogtown front desk in Gloucester know as well.

Count the return from the end of the illness, not the start. The AKC's guidance is to keep a dog away from other dogs while it has symptoms and for at least two weeks after the coughing stops, and to skip boarding, daycare and social contact in that time. Most mild cases clear within 7 to 10 days, according to the AVMA, so for many dogs the whole break runs to three or four weeks. Your vet may advise a different timeline for your dog; follow theirs.

A careful facility responds to a cluster of coughs along the lines the science suggests. The Merck manual's control advice is that dogs with kennel cough should be housed apart from other dogs, with good hygiene, and it notes that extremes of ventilation, temperature and humidity raise susceptibility. The AVMA adds that some of the organisms survive in the environment for weeks, so toys, bedding and bowls matter as much as the dogs.

What Dogtown does in a week like that, and how we would tell you, is a question to ask us directly; we answer it at the evaluation and on the phone, and you should put the same question to any daycare. A complete answer covers four things: how a dog that starts coughing during the day is separated, how shared bowls, toys and surfaces are handled, how owners whose dogs shared a group are told, and what a dog needs before it comes back.