Checking your Dog's Sleeping Respiratory Rate

Having heart disease is not the same as heart failure. When the heart is failing there are treatments that can be given to help. Monitoring the resiratory rate is one simple tool we can use to help determine if the heart is failing and also monitor response to treatment. Sometimes we may ask you to monitor your dog's resting respiratory rate. When your dog is relaxed and asleep we are less likely to have interference from things like excitement, fear or exercise.

How to do it

So this is what we need to do:

1. Wait until your dog is asleep
2. set a countdown timer to 30 seconds (use your phone or watch)
3. start the timer and count the number of times your dog breaths in
4. When the timer stops, double the number of beaths your counted

The count should be less than 30 breaths/minute in a normal healthy dog. Greater than 30 indicates a problem.

There's an app for that...

There are some apps developed that can be used to calculate, record, get reminders to record and monitor your dog's resting respiratory rate. The android app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and the ioS app is available from the Apple App Store