[ SHOWGSD-L ] heart murmurs in puppies

From: pruett@xxxxxxxxx
To: showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:45:54 +0000
>I know that heart murmurs in young puppies are sort of common and NORMALLY
>are not a big deal and they go away within a couple months.
>Any more info I can give these people about this??  I am thinking their vet
>made a real big deal of it.  I talked to my vet just now and he said he
>usually
>he dosent pay much attention to them at this age and they usually go away and
>he wouldnt be upset about it.  He also said he knew of a vet who did a
>complete cardiac workup on an 8 week old  puppy with a murmur and 2 weeks
>later it
>was gone and the pup was fine

Heart murmurs are graded - 1 through 4, I believe.  I never worry about a grade
1.  It is an innocent murmur, caused by a puppy's rapid growth.  I sell those
puppies at full price, but disclose the murmur in the sales contract and add a
special guarantee for the heart so that the buyers don't think I'm tryng to
pull a fast one.

A grade 2 murmur may represent a lasting problem - and I do not sell those
puppies (have never had more than a grade 1 in GSD's, but see more murmurs in
my shelties).  I gave away a nice sheltie puppy with a grade 2 murmur this
year.

A Grade 3 murmur does represent a significant problem.  Again, I've seen it only
my in shelties, but it was a PDA and required surgery.

Just like some vets aren't very good at reading x-rays, some aren't very good at
hearing murmurs.  A puppy must be sitting up or standing when listening to the
heart.  If you listen to a puppy's heart while it's lying down, you can hear
all sorts of odd things.  I once had a vet swear to my clients that the puppy
had an awful murmur and that I surely had lied to them about the puppy's
initial health check because no vet would have missed that murmur.  The people
took their puppy off to a specialist for an ultrasound.  Half-way through the
procedure the specialist stopped, told him he wanted to save them money by
cutting the ultrasound short, and told them there was absolutely nothing wrong
with the puppy's heart.  In retrospect, we are assuming that the vet listened
to the puppy's heart while it was under anesthesia to be neutered and the
anesthesia was adversly affecting the heart.  These people switched to a
different vet...

Laurie Pruett
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[ SHOWGSD-L ] heart murmurs in puppies

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