Is exercise good for dogs with heart disease? Surprising Answer

When is a good time to exercise a dog with a heart murmur

Dogs with a heart murmur are usually intolerant of hot and humid days so take short walks very early in the day. You can use more mental exercise activities in the summer to help keep their mind stimulated, such as puzzle games.

The rest of the year you can set a schedule to suit your dog.

Try to leave 30 minutes after mealtimes before walks and physical activities to reduce heart strain.

What is a heart murmur in dogs?

When listening to the heart with a stethoscope an abnormal heart sound is heard that is caused by turbulent blood flow through the heart valves, or across abnormal structures in the heart. They are graded depending on their severity wih 1-3 being mild and 4-6 more severe.

Exercise ideas for dogs with heart murmurs

Most dogs love their walkies and this shouldn’t need to change too much. Take shorter walks and keep an eye on your dog. If they usually pull but are now behind you, start panting or sit down because they’re tired, then end the walk.

Instead of the same ol’ route, take your dog somewhere new for a sniffari adventure. Meander through the woods and let them sniff and snuffle the trees, plants and forest trails.

Keep them on the lead and watch that they don’t try and scavenge on the walk. Especially in Autumn when acorns and conkers are on the ground, they are particularly dangerous to dogs.

Fifteen minutes of sniffing is the equivalent of a 2-mile walk in doggy exercise points.

Mental stimulation can provide much relief from boredom for your dog. Easy puzzles such as the Muffin Tin Game can be quickly organised from a few objects at home. Other brain games can be bought, like this one from Nina Ottosson, which provide a challenge to help your dog develop puzzle-solving strategies.

OUR TOP PICKS: See what our top dog puzzles for 2021 are

Kongs and other stuffable toys present an excellent opportunity to provide cognitive, sensory, environmental and, of course, food enrichment. It will slow down eating times and provide a relaxing and stress-free activity that they will enjoy. There are many types of stuffable toy, and you can use lots of different ingredients for fillings to mix it up and keep it interesting. Here’s a great roundup of 15 recipes for stuffing as well as ideas for toys to stuff.

Training is a great time to bond with your dog, and you can pick easy tricks first and then chain them together to make a little routine. They provide plenty of enrichment and will get both your brains working with a little physical activity. Try these five tricks:

High Five

Take a Bow

Sit Pretty

Ring a bell to go out

Retrieve a dropped item

Here’s my list of 40 tricks you can teach your dog.

Nose work is an excellent exercise for your dog. It offers your dog the opportunity to use their sense of smell, brain, and body to sniff out the treats you hide. It can be played indoors on a rainy door, out in the garden or on a walk. Here’s my step-by-step guide to playing the Find it! Game.

Whatever level of training your dog has you can spend some time refreshing their skillset. Take one basic command at a time and work on that. You can take the training up a level by changing the criteria. For example you could aim to:

Improve their response time to your command by only rewarding when they perform the desired behaviour within your time criteria e.g one second.

Add some distance to the sit command i.e. you are further away when you give your cue

Add duration to a stay command, one second at a time.

Add in distractions to strengthen the command response e.g. other people in the room

Change the location of training to help generalise the command eg kitchen, living room, garden

Hide and Seek is a great game to play in the house or in the garden. It encourages your dog to pay attention to you and learn that searching for you is fun. This can be an indispensable skill for when you are out and about to help them not wander off on walks.

To play indoors, pop a treat on the floor for your dog and point to it.

When they are busy and attention is not on you, slip out the door to the next room and hide.

Wait a moment, then call your dog.

As they enter the room you may call them again to help them locate you.

Give them plenty of praise and a treat when they’ve sniffed you out.

We have floor to ceiling curtains so often stand behind them. Hiding behind a sofa or under the cushions is good fun too!

The aim of this exercise is for your dog to zigzag between objects. This is usually cones or poles but you can use any objects you have at home and make a course. Keep the pace slow so you don’t overexert your dog.

Place the cones in a straight line leaving plenty of space between them so your dog can walk easily between them.

Lure your dog with a treat to walk through the first two cones. Give praise.

Lure back through the next two cones and praise.

Keep zigzagging slowly through the cones til the end and then praise and give them your dog the treat. Repeat 5 times.

Flowerpots make good weave cone alternatives in your garden.

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