Canine Heart Murmur (part 1).

Canine heart murmur is a rare and difficult disease to handle. Information on it is very hard to find, and so I write this to share what little I know of this largely untreatable condition.

I have this amazing dog, and his name is Jack. He is a mutt, mixed with at least half German Shepherd, and I think a Whippet. For almost his entire life, he was known for his energy, health, and handsomeness. He's been kept at the right weight his whole life, and walked 3 times a week for the last 2.5 years.

Well, about 5 months ago he was diagnosed with a little problem called a heart murmur.

As it has been classified, there are 6 stages to a heart murmur: 1 being the mildest, and 6 being the worst case scenario. A heart murmur is basically an irregular sound in the heart beat, as far as I am aware of, it's a symptom of a bad chamber, or valve: that is, as the heart pumps blood, one of the valves is not sealing off properly. This allows for semi bi-directional blood flow to occur in the affected chamber which is bad. Each chamber is designed for either an in-flow of blood, or an out flow, and if a chamber designed for one direction is allowing another, than the heart begins to lose efficiency.

When he was diagnosed, Jack had a level 3 heart murmur, which isn't so bad: it's the last stage before you have to start worrying. 4, 5, and 6 are the advanced stages. We were basically told to go home and monitor his living. For the first month all was fairly normal. He showed nothing beyond normal aging signs: Jack is a 13 year-old, midsized dog: 45 pounds healthy (and still very fit and youthful for his age).

I will end part 1 of Canine Heart Murmur at about 6 weeks from Jack's diagnosis; this period is chosen because it seems to mark his journey into the later phase of his life, what looks to be the last stage. We noticed a very uncomfortable, hollow sounding cough begin to show itself occasionally. At 6 weeks, when this cough persisted, we took him to the vet. They X-rayed his chest and got "specialists" involved, and they concluded that basically the cough may have been allergy related, as there was no seen fluid buildup in his lungs (one of the common symptoms of heart murmurs). However he was bumped up to a stage 4 murmur. This minor consolation did not last long.