Download Heart Failure - Abbott Animal Hospital

Your dog most likely holds a special place in your heart. And one of your responsibilities as his owner is to
keep his heart healthy. Unfortunately, the heart is an organ that frequently fails in dogs and millions of dogs
examined each year have some form of heart disease. One major threat to your dog's health is heart failure.
Heart failure is a condition caused by an abnormality in the structure or the function of the heart. The heart is a
pump. And when it fails it is unable to pump normal quantities of blood to the tissues of the body. Often heart
failure leads to fluid retention in the lung and the body cavities leading to the condition called "congestive heart
failure."
There are many causes of heart failure in dogs, including: birth (congenital) defects of the heart, degeneration of
the heart valves, heart muscle disease (cardiomyopathy), heartworm disease, diseases of the pericardium (the
lining around the heart), and irregular electrical rhythms of the heart (arrhythmia).
Dogs of any age and any breed can develop heart failure. There is certainly a predisposition for heart failure
caused by cardiomyopathy in giant canine breeds. Many older, small breed dogs develop heart failure from
abnormal function of the heart valves as the valve tissue degenerates.
Heart failure affects your dog by reducing the amount of blood that is pumped to the muscles, leading to
fatigue. In addition, most cases of heart failure are associated with accumulation of fluid in the lungs
(pulmonary edema), the chest cavity (pleural effusion), or the abdominal cavity (ascites). This fluid
accumulation can lead to shortness of breath and other problems such as coughing and difficult breathing.
What To Watch For
Some of the symptoms of heart failure, and the progression of heart failure in a dog, are related to increased
activity of the nervous system and to increased concentrations of circulating hormones (and related chemicals).
These include:
Coughing
Shortness of breath
Difficult breathing (dyspnea)
Weight loss
Fatigue