Heart Healthy Ideas for Pets

Marty and Laura share heart healthy ideas for our pets from weight management to fitness to genetics.

“We can’t really talk about prevention without talking about genetics,” Marty said, “because from the very inception of a puppy, we can control their genetics to a certain extent. There are DNA tests. And there are phenotype tests that we can do for cardiac disease.

“I think it’s really important if you’re buying a dog from a breed that tends to have cardiac disease, that we start off with the foundation of do the very best you can to select a dog that is less likely to develop cardiac disease than others in its breed category.

“There’s a really fabulous website called the Cardiac Education Group. It is absolutely spectacular. It’s written for veterinarians, by veterinarians, but there’s a whole section in there for pet owners. So if you have a dog that’s been diagnosed or a cat that’s been diagnosed with cardiac disease, you want to go to the cardiac education group and then find the little menu and Scroll down and click on the For Pet Owners.

“Many puppies under 12 weeks of age will have what’s called a functional murmur. We can hear it. It doesn’t sound very loud. It sounds like it’s probably innocent. And many of them will go away as the dogs get older.

“Most veterinary cardiologists won’t echo a dog or cat until they’re at least 12 to 16 weeks old for two reasons. One is it’s hard to see anything on the echo when they’re that little. And two is because so many of them go away on their own that we don’t worry about it.

“Now, the one thing I tell a lot of people is that puppies have a physiological murmur because all puppies are anemic. All kittens are anemic. You are born with a certain number of red blood cells and when your body grows faster than your bone marrow can keep up with, you are anemic.”

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.