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Earlier this summer, my husband and I were letting our dog, Reese, run after bunny-foo-foos — known more commonly as desert cottontails or even just bunnies — in a wash near our house in central Phoenix. For our pittie, the short sprints after rabbits and the occasional ground squirrel who easily outraced her was great exercise before the heat set in for the day. So when she developed a limp a few weeks ago and we didn’t see any visible injury, we assumed it was a strain from her brush adventures.
But the limp didn’t go away. Then one night she had a coughing fit. In the nearly six years we’ve had her in our family, we’d never seen her cough so long, so ferociously. As she lay hacking at the foot of our bed, we nervously checked her breathing, and peeked in her throat to make sure she didn’t have something stuck. Our Sweet Muffin coughed all night…