Hmm.. Ds hasn't been quite that bad. When he got a cold tho (although not so much this past season) he would cough a lot and at night it would have quite a bark. That was my signal to check him, and he would have a wheeze and an obvious tracheal tug. Usually we could relieve it with ventolin (4-6 puffs) about 1/2-1hr apart? If it wasn't relieving it to my liking we would use predmix which was almost instant relief for him and see dr next day. He wasn't sick enough for it to be labeled croup most times and dr described him as a happy wheezer cos it didn't seem to distress him much even tho he could have a lingering wheeze.
It seemed seasonal as well as when he got a cold and we were going to look into allergies (he has very mild eczema too periodically) but because he seemed to be growing out of it we didn't follow up. But just recently we've connected things like watermelon to triggering this cough in him so we might look into allergies after all. But these days his wheeze/barking cough is fairly mild and quite spaced apart and he just uses ventolin to relieve it and then he's fine.
He didn't have any of this before age 3 and only history of asthma is dh's bro having it as a kid. Maybe cos of his age they went straight to asthma over croup?