The Effect of Dog Obesity on Your Dog’s Heart
Posted on 05. Mar, 2010 by doglover in Featured, General Topics
There is a clear link between dog obesity and the health of your dog’s heart. The more weight your dog carries, the harder the heart must work to push the blood through his body, resulting in an increase in heartbeats per minute and the force of the heartbeats themselves. Additionally the circulation of the blood is impaired in an obese dog. While it has been well known for some time that obesity predisposes a human to heart failure, it is equally true that it increases a dog’s risk of heart failure as well. Some of the most recent studies have indicated that dog obesity does more than just increase an animal’s risk of developing heart disease, but has been found to be a direct cause of heart failure.
What this means for your dog is very simple. If you have an obese dog, even if he does not exhibit any of the warning signs or other risk factors for heart disease, the simple fact that he is obese will dramatically increase his chances of developing heart disease. In fact, morbidly obese animals can be at risk of sudden death from heart failure for no other reason than that they are obese.
Heart disease in dogs can not only cause sudden death, but it can seriously reduce your dog’s quality of life. Coughing, breathlessness and reduced exercise tolerance are all symptoms of heart failure in dogs.
Don’t take chances, get the weight off your dog. His heart will beat longer and stronger, which means you’ll have him around for many more years.
