A Kennel cough is usually associated with puppies or adult dogs. In reference to your doctors question it would be considered a "barking" cough or even considered a dry cough.
It's a respiratory infection in dogs that creates a bad hacking, honking cough that comes in fits, so severe at times that it is as if stomach contents will be vomited up or actually are vomited up.
Other name of Kennel cough is tracheobronchitis. It is a canine illness at respiratory system. It is so named because, as it spread more closer to kennel.
