Dog Lover’s Guide to
Canine Laryngeal Paralysis

What Is Laryngeal Paralysis?

Here’s the thing about about laryngeal paralysis (Lar Par) and geriatric-onset laryngeal paralysis and polyneuropathy (GOLPP) — your dog might be perfectly healthy. Liver, heart, all the vital organs are in tip-top working order. Your dog has lots of energy and wants to run, play and enjoy life. The problem is that the nerves that control two little muscles in the throat, the ones the dog uses to bark, stop working. Instead of opening and closing, the voice box (or larynx) becomes paralyzed and stops letting air through.

Choosing A Path Forward

If your dog has laryngeal paralysis or GOLPP, you have some tough decisions to make. We’ve been there and understand how hard it is to see a beloved companion struggle to breathe. The most important thing you can do is inform yourself and develop a game plan moving forward.

What you do now depends on:

• How much money you can spend on your dog’s treatment.
• How long you guess your dog might stay healthy after treatment.
• How much risk you’re willing to subject your dog to during and after treatment.

Those are three critical factors that will inform your decision process, so take a moment to decide which of these factors best reflect your situation:

Where To Go From Here

This website is dedicated to helping you make informed choices about LP based on current information about stent treatments and clinical research data about surgical options. We started gathering information about the stent treatment in April of 2022 as our dog was days away from euthanasia due to end-stage laryngeal paralysis. Like many other people, we refused surgery because of the high cost and risk factors for our senior dog. As of April 2024, our dog is nearly sixteen years old and has lived over 570 days post-stent with a good quality of life, and we want everyone to have that option available to them. But if you can’t find a stent provider, you will have to make an informed choice about other options.

The LarPar Crash Course provides details about the condition of laryngeal paralysis — what it is, what causes it, and how it progresses. The FAQs page provides answers to many common questions about LarPar. On the Treatment Options page you’ll find details about ways to treat laryngeal paralysis — surgical techniques, the laryngeal stent, as well as various ways you can try to manage laryngeal paralysis symptoms without veterinary-medical treatment if surgery or stent is not a option for you. You can find links to research about canine laryngeal paralysis on the Research Links & More Info page. To get a Lar Par Dog Lover’s perspective on Lar Par-related topics, you can visit our News & Notes section. There you’ll find insights on current topics of interest to people whose dogs are suffering from laryngeal paralysis.

The information on this site is compiled from verifiable sources which include websites of veterinary institutions, published research, and discussions with veterinarians. Our goal is to share information we‘ve collected so that people don‘t have to repeat our work and reinvent the wheel. Unlike other sites, the stent treatment for laryngeal paralysis in dogs features prominently on these pages. That‘s because 1) it saved our dog‘s life and 2) as of mid-2024 this is still the only place you can learn about it. We hope this information helps you on your Lar Par journey moving forward.