This way, the dog's immune system is already prepared for, and therefore more resistant to, the targeted disease. Inoculation is not a good treatment for a case of dog cough if the dog is already affected, but it is one of the best methods for prevention. Dogs that have been vaccinated are extremely unlikely to contract the disease that they have been vaccinated against. Some minor canine respiratory infections, also known as dog coughs, can be prevented with inoculations, but since there is such a large variety of different microbes that can lead to these types of infections, complete prevention using vaccines is next to impossible, even if your dog has been vaccinated for many species of pathogen.
How Inoculations Work
When a vaccine is injected into a dog's bloodstream, it mixes with the blood and comes into contact with the immune system. The immune system automatically reacts against foreign substances such as vaccines by creating chemicals called antibodies that are specifically designed to attach to the specific molecular structure of the foreign substance. Antibodies attract white blood cells to the foreign particle, and the white blood cell destroys it.
The particles in a vaccine are structured similarly enough to the chemical structures on a known pathogen that the antibodies created to attach to the vaccine will also attach to the pathogen. When the dog is exposed to the disease, its immune system is ready to fight the pathogen off from before it even comes into contact with the pathogen's chemical signature. Because of this, the pathogen is usually eradicated by the immune system before it even has time to cause any symptoms.
Kinds of Dog Cough Inoculations
If the pathogen the dog is being vaccinated against is a bacterium, the vaccine can consist of a genetically modified form of that species of bacteria that does not have the any of the harmful effects on the dog as the original species. If the pathogen is a virus, the vaccine will be a modified form of the virus. The problem with inoculations as a means of dog cough prevention is that both the bacteria and the viruses that cause this disease reproduce very quickly, which makes it easy for new strands or the pathogen that have different chemical signatures, to evolve in a very short time.
While most cases of dog cough heal by themselves in a few days to a few weeks, and rarely turn out to be very serious, it is still important to help your pet as much as you can. Most veterinarians recommend that you inoculate your dog against the most common types of dog cough, if only to prevent the hassle of treating the disease when it is actually contracted by the dog.