Heart Murmur

Hey
what exactly is a grade 2 heart murmur ,my x shephard has a grade 2 but the vets dont explain it very good ,they just say its not serious ,any ideas????

There are 6 grades of hear murmurs, 6 being the worst, 1 being the start.
It is when the heart is not pumping blood correctly and sounds different to a 'normal' heart beat, it can sound squishier (hopefully this makes sense ) as the valves in the heart aren't doing their job properly.
If it is not bad often a dog can go about every day activities fine. As it worsens it can affect the way they deal with exercise and hot or cold weather.
There is medication for dogs that show clinical signs of needing help.
There is no definites with how long or if it will progress into a murmur that requires medication, or how long until it does worsen. It could be weeks it could be years.
My dog was diagnosed with a heart murmur about a year ago, and I was told he had approx 12 mths to live! He is still going well, he is on medication for it and if it worsens there is a few other medications they can put him on, he also just underwent an operation and was fine (better than I did that is for sure ).
Vets can recommend and ECG and/or x-ray to get a baseline for their murmur, so if it progresses they can look back and see how it has changed.
hope this helps a bit

My 13 year old WSD has a heart murmur that registers around 4/5 on the 1 - 6 scale, so fairly serious. However, it was only picked up on a routine pre-op examination and she has never shown any symptoms so is not on any medication and still does veteran agility. If she hadn't had the examination, I would never have known!

Each dog will have their own reaction to it and lifestyle, weight and nutrition will have an impact on how ill (or otherwise) it makes them. As my vet said at my dog's last booster visit, she may never show any symptoms and it may never affect her.

Thankyou
i understand more now , sometimes vets can be a bit complicated when they talk , my vet is super ,but a little hard to undersatand at times

Tanya is 6 and the vet only found the murmur about 8 month ago ,he said it was unusall for her to just all of a sudden develop one ,she never had one before ,so every time she goes for her cartrophen or a check up on her skin ,he makes sure it stays the same ,and it is ,he said its a grade 2 , she is on steriods for her skin problem ,will theses cause any effect to her murmur or not ??????

My WSD who died last year had a grade 2 murmer which never affected her at all and my 12 year old lab x lurcher also has a grade 2.

Nothing to worry about unless it gets worse and/or dog starts to show any distress.

My cross is on epiphem for fits and has been for several years and it hasn't made any difference.

Try not to worry too much.

rune

Thanks sooo much
i undersatnd a lot more about it now
having it explained has really helped me ,Thanks guys

Hello Donna a heart murmur is a symptom (rather than a condition) of a number of conditions and in older dogs it is usually attributed to age related heart failure, the heart is no longer working so efficiently to pump blood around the body.

One of my dogs Amy was diagnosed with a grade 2 heart murmur during a routine vets visit when she was 10 years old, the murmur increased gradually over the years.

Amy lived to the age of 16 . She was prescribed Vasotop 1.25 and I kept her weight down making sure she had a good diet and regular short spells of exercise at her own pace.

OH i didnt know that ,the only thing my vet told me was she had a grade 2 murmour and that its stable at the moment ,but maybe why he didnt explian it was because at the same time i was having one of my other dogs pts .
she is on steriods for her skin so she keeps putting wieght on , we have tried her off the steriods but she gets constant skin infections then ,so its tricky at the moment for her wieght