Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it matters.

Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Smarter News. My name is Jenna, and we have a very interesting and

newsworthy topic today that's very of the moment. This is a story that has been covered over the

last several weeks, even several months, but it sort of rose to the surface of the news cycle this

week. And because so many of you are owners, and I don't even know if that's the right term,

owners of pets, that you have pets in your household.

You have pets as a member of your family.

It's certainly got our attention.

But here's the words that will sound all too familiar for so many of us, a mysterious respiratory

illness.

I know we've heard those terms a lot over the last several years, but this is the

first time we're really seeing it specifically related to dogs. And this is what the story is about.

A mysterious respiratory illness found in dogs across many different states in America.

It would be probably an over-exaggeration or over-emotional

to call it an outbreak, although I'll ask my guest about that. We're seeing that in some cases,

there are several cases of this mysterious illness in some dogs, maybe a grouping of some cases

elsewhere. The pattern of this illness seems a little bit confusing,

and there's a question about what is actually causing it? Is it a bacteria? Is it a virus? What is

actually going on here? So I was looking to talk to someone that really has a great understanding

of all of the different parts of this story. And I believe we found the perfect guess for many

different reasons.

...