Our sweet, abundantly adored apple head chihuahua Bentley that we adopted from the Humane Society in 2018 now has heart disease. He was 8 when we rescued him and so he’s definitely a senior dog now. Initially his age began to show as he started limping, and busters hemp oil did the trick. The only time he limps now, is if someone forgets to give him the oil.
A few years pass and he began to have seizures, every two weeks, thankfully, they have medicine for that! So he started on an anti-seizure med and it’s worked great, no episodes since.
Just before Christmas 2021 I noticed Bentley’s breathing was labored, it seemed shallow and short. I asked Mitch and Nettie to let me know if they notice something different. The next day my grand-niece, giving Bentley his usual overload of kisses and love stated that his breathing seemed weird.
After a visit to the vet, he stated that Bentley has a heart murmur, and heart disease. He said it’s quite common in his breed of dog and put him on a med to slow to progression. A week later his breathing hasn’t gotten better and I called to update to doc and he prescribed lasix (furosemide- treats fluid build up on heart) and talked to me about what kind of food Bentley eats. Specifically if his food is grain free, which it is. To my surprise and to everyone’s, they are finding that dog foods that are grain free are starting to show some correlation with heart issues. From what I was told, they are currently studying and learning about this. Please take this information with a “grain” ( no pun intended, but how fun is that!) of salt and talk to your dogs veterinarian, and research this subject.
So, it’s day 2 of lasix, Bentleys breathing is much better and over the next week we will be switching his dog food and reducing his med of lasix. He was eating solid gold weight control grain free and I decided to switch him to science diet perfect weight small and mini adult. I know everyone has an opinion about what type of dog food is best, and every time I feel like I found the best one, I hear of issues. So… we’ll see. Let’s hope it all works well for him.
Signing off for now, I’m on my way to give Bentley his 7 pm heart pill, get him to take a nap so I can count his breaths and report back to vet tomorrow. don’t forget to kiss your critters… and your humans.
Goin' Road Trippin' 