Heart mururs/disease

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poiuytrewq

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Does anyone have any experience or information please?

My little dog has just been diagnosed today with a serious murmur/heart disease. Whilst obviously its very bad news I had almost convinced myself he had lung cancer (due to similar symptoms on a friends dog) so the fact we can help him is a bonus to me.
He will go in next week for x-rays and then will be prescribed medication to slow the deterioration down and keep him happy and healthy as long as possible.

If anyone has any info I'd love to hear from you especially any ways I can help him.
 
Not a dog, but i have a cat with congestive heart failure. It's about 18 months since he first showed symptoms (a cough) and the x-rays revealed an enlarged heart and lung filled with fluid. He has daily medication. He has Frusemide and Fortekor once a day but we've recently had to start giving him Pred too (twice a day) as he was deteriorating and started to heave. He's really improved with the extra medication, his breathing is almost normal and he has even begun hunting again, so he definitely feels better.

This might be completely different to your dog's problem, but hopefully it will give you hope that a heart problem isn't automatically the end straight away.
 
He's a JR x shih tzu!!
Faracat it sounds similar. He's coughing, his breathing is slightly odd in the evening. Exercise tolerance is fading. He also collapsed a few weeks ago which I posted here about but decided it was indeed shock after a cat fight! [that was the start of it]
My fear is the cost! Of course it's money I will find so I guess I should not worry yet!
He's also very very sick yesterday and over night. I will call the vet again at lunch time if that continues as he can't cope with that.
In general he's still himself, a bit mad and seems happy although quiet this morning :(
 
A friends little shih tzu was happy for years on pills. She was incontinent with them, which friend didn't mind dealing with, but she was quite happy in herself.
 
I had a 2 year old rescue dog with a serious heart murmer. His was very serious, but the initial signs were that when he went for a walk, he'd collapse after the first few yards, be sick and then perk up as though he was absolutely fine. He quickly became incontinent and intolerance to exercise increased markedly over the next couple of weeks. Took him to two different vet practices but basically, the prognosis was pallative care.
I suspect that was why he was abandoned by his previous owners. He was an absolutely fabulous dog.

I hope your boy's condition is not quite so severe, some dogs do manage well with treatment, don't they ?
 
My old cavalier had a heart murmur from 7 years old, she was 14 when she died. Only needed medication from 10 years old. Started on fortekor then changed to vetmedin. For the last 18 months needed furosemide to reduce the fluid round her heart. She lived a happy and very full life until the last 6 months and it was only the last 2 weeks when she stopped eating and went off her back legs that I had to let her go. She was an amazing and fabulous dog, competed in working trials and agility until she was 10.
My biggest tips are to not let them get overweight and keep yhem active. Good luck
 
My BC has a heart murmur, when he was a young puppy he had one episode of collapse/vomiting but perked up straight away.

The murmur was picked up on when he was about 18 months old at a routine appt. Very often the vets couldn't actually find it, but recently it is now a grade 2. The senior vet has explained that he has aortic stenosis so they have to listen in front as well as at the side to find it.

Anyway, he is not and has never been on any meds for it. He leads a full, active and healthy life and touch wood has never had any problems associated with it. He's 6.5 now.

There are lots of effective drugs though, so I am sure they will be able to find one to suit your boy and restore his quality of life.

I don't know why they seem so common now though, they also diagnosed one in my kitten but a very low grade (grade 1), part of me wondered if they were quite popular to diagnose in asymptomatic animals.
 
twiggy2 said:
sorry to hear that..I am surprised they have not started on meds straight away
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They need to confirm the diagnosis with x-rays before they can prescribe anything. I just cant get him too the vet in the morning until next week without getting myself sacked at work!
She said he will be ok in that time but I'm only to give short lead walks, which he's really un-impressed about until its under control.

There is no way this particular dog will ever be over weight, even if I tried so I guess that's a positive in this situation.
From what I've read on the internet (dangerous I know) he's about grade 4/5, this is going off his symptoms.
So sad for my little midget!
 
One of my springers had a shocking heart condition for years, in fact he had a whole text book of problems but I didn't lose him until he was 13 years old, which was nothing short of a miracle really.

It all depends on what your final diagnosis is but I really do hope your vets can manage your chap and you have many more years together.

Boston used to have 'episodes' when he had done too much and he kind of fainted but I learnt to manage that quite easily and could bring him round fairly swiftly. I never molly coddled him and he lived his life like a normal dog but I watched his weight religiously and he was fed a low fat, medium protein diet.

X-rays are good as they will show if the heart is enlarged and any fluid accumulation but an ultrasound gives a really detailed view of the heart itself.

Boston eventually died while out on a walk!! He had a heart attack on the footpath about quarter of a mile away from home, little sod. He didn't seem to feel a thing (it was all over in seconds) but I had a nightmare getting him home, plus the other 3 dogs.
 
deb_l222 said:
One of my springers had a shocking heart condition for years, in fact he had a whole text book of problems but I didn't lose him until he was 13 years old, which was nothing short of a miracle really.

It all depends on what your final diagnosis is but I really do hope your vets can manage your chap and you have many more years together.

Boston used to have 'episodes' when he had done too much and he kind of fainted but I learnt to manage that quite easily and could bring him round fairly swiftly. I never molly coddled him and he lived his life like a normal dog but I watched his weight religiously and he was fed a low fat, medium protein diet.

X-rays are good as they will show if the heart is enlarged and any fluid accumulation but an ultrasound gives a really detailed view of the heart itself.

Boston eventually died while out on a walk!! He had a heart attack on the footpath about quarter of a mile away from home, little sod. He didn't seem to feel a thing (it was all over in seconds) but I had a nightmare getting him home, plus the other 3 dogs.
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Thanks, Oh gosh, that must have been a bit shocking? Nice way for a dog to go though- doing what most dogs love best :). Mine is only little but having to carry him back a few times I couldn't have done it had he been much bigger!

This morning he's actually much much brighter and far more himself. I think the vomiting yesterday and the day before was something else. He was starving last night and wolfed his dinner down and has just had breakfast and kept that down also. He's back to being bouncy and lively. (he's fed twice a day as I had trouble keeping weight on my old dog so he had 2x daily meals and I just split this ones in half so it seemed fair! now its stuck)

Did you find it a costly condition to manage?
 
To be honest he never cost a penny as, despite all his problems, he wasn't on any long term medication. We tried corventral (think that's what it was called) but it actually made his 'episodes' more frequent - he was a very strange dog.

His list of ailments were mitral valve regurgitation, hugely enlarged heart so cardio myopathy was assumed but his lungs never filled with fluid (go figure lol), pronounced heart murmur and just for good measure he had a narrowed trachea so always had to be walked in a harness. Any pressure on his neck and he would choke.

It sounds utterly dreadful when I write it all down but he was a tremendously happy dog and he didn't know he was poorly so he was treated just like the others really.

He is still, to this day, the handsomest spring-a-ding I've ever had and you would never have known, to look at him, how sickly he was.

bonnieandboston.jpg
 
Juno's medication was about £60 per month when she was on 3 different medications. This was towards the end when her heart was the worst the vet had heard. Juno was not insured and the cost of the tablets was cheaper than monthly premiums would have been for a 13 year old CKCS anyway. My vets were aware that she was not insured and worked with me to keep treatment affordable.
The medication helped Juno have a good quality of life
 
My 11 year old greyhound has a heart murmur, but compared to the CKCS I am used to it is a pretty mild one and she got it relatively late in life. She was displaying exercise intolerance rather than the characteristic heart cough, she has been on Cardalis for about 8 months now and I noticed a change in her behaviour almost immediately. She was back to being her usual happy skippy self within a few days :)

it costs me £52 per month (1 tablet a day) as I've negotiated a 20% discount with my vets, but she is a 25kg dog
 
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