The Canine Ledger

Heart Failure at Home: Counting Your Dog's Sleeping Breaths

For a dog with heart disease, counting breaths during sleep is the most useful thing an owner can do at home. How to count, and when to call the vet.

Written by thecanineledger

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Go to a vet or emergency clinic now if your dog is struggling to breathe while resting, breathing with their mouth open or their belly heaving, has blue or grey gums, or collapses. Don’t wait to count. → Emergency Signs in Dogs: When to Go Now, Not Tomorrow

If your dog has heart disease, your vet may ask you to count their breathing while they sleep. It sounds too simple to matter. It isn’t.

The 2019 consensus guidelines on the most common heart disease in dogs, written by a panel of veterinary cardiologists, say that among the things an owner can watch at home, “identification of increases in resting respiratory rate above normal baseline has the best predictive value for impending clinical decompensation” (Keene et al., ACVIM consensus, J Vet Intern Med 2019). In plain terms: a rising breathing rate is often the first sign that heart failure is starting or getting worse, sometimes before anything else shows.

While a breath count can’t diagnose anything on its own, it can tell you early when to call the vet. This page explains how to do it.

1. Why breathing changes in heart failure

The guideline describes myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD), a leaky valve on the left side of the heart, as “the most common heart disease of dogs in many parts of the world, accounting for approximately 75% of heart disease cases seen in dogs by veterinary practices in North America.” Many dogs with it never show signs of heart failure. In some, the heart eventually can’t keep up, and fluid builds up in the lungs. This is congestive heart failure.

Fluid in the lungs makes breathing faster, even at rest and during sleep. Because a sleeping dog isn’t panting from heat, excitement or exercise, sleeping breaths give a cleaner signal.

A study of dogs being treated for heart failure found that “Only respiratory rate predicted the presence of CHF at examination 2 with high accuracy”, and that “Home monitoring of respiratory rate was simple and was the most useful in the assessment of successful treatment of CHF” (Schober et al., J Am Vet Med Assoc 2011). CHF is congestive heart failure.

2. How to count

  1. Wait until your dog is deeply asleep, not dozing or dreaming, in a cool, calm room.
  2. Watch the chest. One rise and one fall is one breath.
  3. Count for a full minute, or for 30 seconds and double it.
  4. Write it down with the date and time. A notebook or phone note is fine.
  5. Repeat on different days to learn your dog’s normal.

Researchers who asked owners to do this found that “Data acquisition was considered relatively simple by most participants” (Rishniw et al., Res Vet Sci 2012).

Our note: Ask your vet whether counting for 30 seconds and doubling is fine for your dog, or whether to count a full minute.

3. What’s normal

The guideline doesn’t set one number. It asks owners and vets to watch for a rise “above normal baseline”: above that dog’s own usual rate.

Studies of owners counting at home give a guide to typical numbers:

  • Healthy adult dogs. In 114 dogs, the average sleeping rate was 13 breaths per minute. The authors concluded that “apparently healthy adult dogs generally have SRR(mean) <30 breaths/min and rarely exceed this rate at any time” (SRR is sleeping respiratory rate) (Rishniw et al. 2012).
  • Dogs with heart disease but no heart failure yet. In 190 dogs, the results “suggested that dogs with confirmed subclinical left-sided heart disease of various severities generally had SRRmean < 25 breaths/min” (Ohad et al., J Am Vet Med Assoc 2013).
  • Dogs whose heart failure is controlled with medicine. “most dogs and cats with CHF that is medically well-controlled and stable have SRRmean and RRRmean <30 breaths/min at home” (Porciello et al., Vet J 2016).

That is where the commonly quoted figure of 30 breaths per minute comes from. Ask your vet what number should prompt a call for your dog. It may be lower than 30 if your dog’s usual rate is low.

Our note: We don’t give a fixed number to call at, because the guideline uses a rise above your dog’s own baseline. Ask your vet for your dog’s number.

4. When to call your vet

  • The sleeping rate is higher than the number your vet gave you, or clearly higher than your dog’s usual rate, on more than one count that day.
  • The rate is rising over several days, even if it is still below that number.
  • Your dog has a new cough, is restless at night, or can’t settle to sleep.
  • Your dog is breathing hard at rest, or the gums look pale, blue or grey: this is an emergency.

Our note: Whether to call after one high count or several is your vet’s call. Ask them what they want you to do.

5. If your dog is on heart medicine

The same count helps your vet judge whether treatment is working. Bring your record to every check-up.

Never change the dose of a heart medicine yourself because of a breath count. Phone the vet. The 2019 guideline encourages home monitoring of breathing and heart rate as part of care, together with support from the vet team to help owners give medicines correctly. → Vet Bills, Medicines and Decisions

Our note: Some phone apps help owners count breaths. We don’t name any.

6. What we could not verify

Commonly saidWhat we found
“Over 30 breaths a minute means heart failure”Not a guideline cutoff. Healthy dogs and dogs with controlled heart failure usually sleep below 30. The guideline uses a rise above the dog’s own baseline.
“Panting is a sign of heart failure”Not on its own. Count during sleep, when panting from heat or excitement doesn’t confuse the count.
“Breath counts replace check-ups”No. They help between visits.
How much earlier a breath count detects heart failureNot found as a figure in what we read.

Sources

Always confirm with your vet before acting on anything on this page.