Anaesthesia in these circumstances can be for 2 reasons ..either panic causing excessive sucking in of air and threatening to callapse airways – an ocassional problem in some dogs is damage to the recurent laryngeal nerve and collapsing of the larynx. They are fine unless they panic and really breath hard enough to callapse the trachea.. anaesthatise them and instantly everything relaxes to normal.
The other likely reason is to generally relax the patient, reduce oxygen demand and be preparatory to intubation and ventilation or tracheostomy and ventilation.
Frankly if i get 'the bug' and respiration is lousy to possibly fatal I'd rather be unconscious to die than do it the aware way…..
pgk