When I try and take my dog (Dex) for a walk, within a few minutes he begins making a coughing noise. The first few gags/coughs are usually not 'productive', but then he will start spitting/coughing up clear spit more often than not. Generally this is the worst at the beginning of the walk, and generally settles down about 20 minutes in. In instances where we have not continued with the walk, he pants heavily for the next 15 minutes or so after returning home, and takes quite some time to settle.
I walk him with a harness, and he is not overweight. He never has this issue when chasing after balls in the backyard (where he is flat out sprinting) or other games that involve him running, only when we take him for a walk.
We encountered another variation of this issue a few months back - we had taken him to a friends place and he began coughing/throwing up. He seemed fine, and it looked like spit, so we just kept an eye on him. He continued this off and on for the next few hours, and by the time we brought him back home, he was heavily panting. Considering this had now gone on for 5-6 hours, we took him to the emergency vet. We chose to get x-rays considering we were concerned about this behavior when exercising as well. The X-rays did not show signs of a collapsing trachea, inflammation etc, however one of the view's wasnt obtained due to Dex being restless & panting. The vet thought that this happened because Dex became over excited, and when he coughed initially, this irritated his throat which is why he continued to cough/gag. She also mentioned that it might be an issue with an elongatde soft palate?
Has anyone had any experience with anything similar? I am concerned that walking him is doing more harm than good!