I love robins, but think they truly are "dirty birds"; the water in our bird bath, which I try to change daily, is always really dirty! They are messy, too; they dig for worms in my garden and kick dirt on the sidewalk. George, maybe your cat will change her mind about eating outside, since there are "food thieves" in your neighborhood! ;>)

I have had "tonsil stones" for many years, but only discovered what they were a couple of years ago, thanks to the lovely people on this forum. I would often get a sore throat and then cough up one of those lovely "pearls" that stunk like YUCK! Then I discovered that I could avoid the sore throat if I got rid of them myself before they became too large. At first I used a tiny crochet hook to pull them out, but hooked my tonsil once and made it bleed. That scared me, so I stopped doing that. Then I found out that if I pushed next to those ugly white things in my tonsils (sort of like squeezing pimples) they would just pop out on their own. Finally, now that I am becoming an old lady, they have really slowed down. They smelled so horrible - I know that my breath must have been awful. By the way, I call them "pearls" because my understanding is that they are formed much the same way as pearls are. Some tiny speck gets in the pockets in the tonsils (a doctor told me that I have more and deeper pockets than average) and layers of yuck are formed around them.

I had a long gone labrador who did suffer from laryngeal paralysis. Unfortunately, he was misdiagnosed for years (kennel cough). It seemed to come around with the antibiotic treatment so I let it go. When I finally pushed it after many bouts with "kennel cough", the x-rays showed the problem. He was 10 by then. We did have the surgery to correct it, unfortunately, he was not in that great of health to begin with and it is very serious surgery to recover from. My lab passed a few months post-surgery. My advice - your dog is young, get a correct diagnosis and have it taken care of while you have time on your side. Younger dogs bounce back much better than seniors. Best of luck to you.

I feel for you. I have been battling some kind of bug for 2 weeks now that started overnight with a horrible painful sore throat and just got progressively worse. Nothing I took would touch the pain in my throat except Advil. 2 weeks later the sore throat has diminished a bit but not completely. Whatever this bug I got I sure hope you don't get. I was drowning in phlegm, coughing but not deep coughs, just short in the throat cough and then I lost the hearing in my right ear which still has not come back. After a week of thinking it was just a bug that would have to go away on its own I finally went to the Doctor. He put me on antibitotics right away, I have an ear infection as well as a swollen parotid gland on my neck. I have not been this sick in 10 years and after 2 weeks I am still coughing and battling this thing. I don't think the antibiotics are helping at all. If after a few days your sore throat does not ease go to the Doctor and don't do what I did and wait. I sucked on Chloraseptic Max lozenges for sore throats and took the Advil which eased the pain.