A British vet has revealed four dog breeds which are prone to heart disease – and what you can do if your pooch is among them.
Content creator @ben.the.vet shared the list in a video on TikTok, where he has more than 208,600 followers.
He often creates clips sharing useful information about how to care for animals responsibly, and about the different health challenges different species and breeds face.
Discussing heart disease in dogs, Ben said: ‘I’ll start with dobermanns, because it is really quite a shocking statistic that over 58 per cent of dobermanns over seven have dilated cardiomyopathy.
‘This is a disease where the muscle in the wall of the heart starts to weaken, leading eventually to heart failure, but also a high risk of a sudden death.’
He noted that unfortunately, there are often no signs of the problem, and that ‘the dog can just drop dead in the park’.
Ben advised people who have dobermans to talk to their vet about screening their dogs from an early age – ideally from around two or three-years-old.
This, he explained, is because if it’s caught early, medication can be given to delay the onset of any problem.
Moving onto the next breed, the vet listed boxers.
He explained: ‘The reason I’ve included them is because there are several different heart conditions they are considered high risk for, unfortunately.
‘One is a congenital problem with aortic or subaortic stenosis, where a narrowing redevelops where blood exits the heart to the rest of the body.
‘Most cases are mild, and there are no clinical signs, we might just hear a heart murmur on examination at the vets.
‘But in severe cases, it can lead to collapse when exercising, and even sudden death.’
However, he continued, this is something breeders are very aware of, and in some countries (including France) its ‘prevalence has been shown to be decreasing significantly because the breeding dogs have been screened’.
Ben added: ‘They also have a three per cent prevalence of pulmonic stenosis, which is a narrowing of the exit from the heart to the lungs, and are also at high risk of dilated cardiomyopathy, the same condition affecting dobermanns.’
The third breed he listed was cavalier King Charles spaniels, saying: ‘I’ve talked a lot about them before, [they are] awesome little dogs, [but they have] terrible hearts.
‘By the age of 10, up to 90 per cent of cavalier King Charles spaniels have mitral valve disease, which is a condition where one of the valves in the heart starts to degenerate and becomes leaky.
‘This is usually detected initially with a heart murmur, but eventually can lead on to the dog going into heart failure, developing a cough and breathing abnormalities, and unfortunately, it is a cause of death for a lot of cavaliers.’
He noted that there is medication that can help slow down the progression of disease, but this depends on what stage of disease the dog is at.
Ben advised people with cavaliers with murmurs to discuss this with their vet if they haven’t already done so.
The fourth and final breed he listed in the video was golden retrievers.
‘[This is] not because they’re at massively high risk of any particular heart problem, but there is a condition called pericardial effusion, which is generally very rare, but at one referral centre, they found that a third of dogs they saw with this condition were golden retrievers, which is really interesting.’
Explaining what pericardial effusion is, Ben said: ‘It’s a condition where fluid builds up in the sac around the heart.
‘Often it builds up slowly, gradually leading to a point where the heart can’t pump blood very effectively, and this can manifest as the dog becoming weaker and weaker and eventually collapsing.’
Ben concluded: ‘I’ve only ever seen two cases of this condition, and interestingly, they were both golden retrievers.’
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