If you have a dog, it's likely that over the past few months you've been hearing about a new canine respiratory illness, but how worried should you really be?

We are constantly seeing infections that are the same viruses or bacteria, but perhaps are a more

severe form, just like with COVID.

It's Tuesday, January 30th, and you guessed it, today is Science Friday.

I'm SciFi producer Deep Peter Schmidt.

There's been a lot of reporting about a quote-unquote mysterious canine respiratory illness going around and in the age of the internet

it's hard to know just how widespread this thing is and how concerned dog owners should be.

The good thing is that there's been a massive effort to break down the genomics of this potential pathogen.

Guest House Ariel Duham Ross speaks with Dr. Deborah Silverstein, professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pennsylvania,

to help break down what's going on here.

Thanks for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you.

So just so we're clear on what we're talking about here, what exactly

are the symptoms of this illness? Well the illness that you are likely referring to

which has recently been dubbed the mysterious dog illness, is something that we've

actually been seeing for many years and more commonly referred to it as the canine infectious respiratory disease complex or C I R D C as an

abbreviation and it's a very close relative of what you previously mentioned to be kennelkoff, except we now know that kennel

cough is really more than just one bug or one infection, but rather it's several different potential organisms that can affect dogs

respiratory tracts and lead to the common signs of coughing and possibly nasal discharge and eye discharge and sometimes make them even feel

sick and not want to eat or clayed with their normal energy levels.

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