My 13 year old dog has a heart murmur and the vet prescribed 5 mg of
Enacard. H has a touchy stomach to begin with and the Enacard sent him over
the edge. Within a day he started to suffer from nausea and diarreha. I
would take him off it and the symptoms would clear up. I would then start
the medication and they would return. I have spoken with other people who
had similar problems in addition to liver and kidney problems. At this
point I am prone to keep him off the medication and let nature takes its
course.

grinder wrote:
My 13 year old dog has a heart murmur and the vet prescribed 5 mg of
Enacard. H has a touchy stomach to begin with and the Enacard sent him over
the edge. Within a day he started to suffer from nausea and diarreha. I
would take him off it and the symptoms would clear up. I would then start
the medication and they would return. I have spoken with other people who
had similar problems in addition to liver and kidney problems. At this
point I am prone to keep him off the medication and let nature takes its
course.

I can understand that - our vet added spironolactone to the lasix
that our 16 year old Chihuahua, Chile, was taking for heart
murmur, water retention, coughing. Chile seemed to be going
downhill; loss of energy, kind of befuddled, sleeping a lot more
than normal, no longer patrolling the yard, poor appetite. After
a few weeks of this, my brain belatedly made the correlation
between the onset of the drugs and her downward spiral. (With
her age and condition, a downward spiral wasn't surprising.)

I stopped the spironolactone and just kept her on Lasix, and
after a few days, she was back to her normal demanding, spunky,
saucy self. If spironlactone was prolonging her life, it was at
a poor quality, so I, too, opted to stop the medication. Next
time we see the vet, I'm going to ask if there's an alternate
med, but if not, I am also going to let nature handle whatever
lasix can't slow.

That's one thing you could explore with your vet - is there a
different med you could give that might not have the side effects?

FurPaw

--
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

To reply, unleash the dog.

"grinder" said in
rec.pets.dogs.health:

At this
point I am prone to keep him off the medication and let
nature takes its course.

That was my decision with Rocky - grade 3 heart murmur now.
He's already taking too many drugs because of his epilepsy and
I don't want to add to that burden.

He's 9.5 years old and still going strong in agility.

--
--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.

In article ,
Rocky wrote:


That was my decision with Rocky - grade 3 heart murmur now.
He's already taking too many drugs because of his epilepsy and
I don't want to add to that burden.

He's 9.5 years old and still going strong in agility.

The only experience I have with pet heart disease is a cat and their
needs are very different from a sporty dog. She had a murmur from birth
but by the time she had failure (@9) she was really too damaged for
anything that would change it.

What is the prognosis and how do you come to the decision about meds? I
am always so conflicted!

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com

"Janet Boss" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Rocky wrote:


That was my decision with Rocky - grade 3 heart murmur now.
He's already taking too many drugs because of his epilepsy and
I don't want to add to that burden.

He's 9.5 years old and still going strong in agility.

The only experience I have with pet heart disease is a cat and their
needs are very different from a sporty dog. She had a murmur from birth
but by the time she had failure (@9) she was really too damaged for
anything that would change it.

What is the prognosis and how do you come to the decision about meds? I
am always so conflicted!

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com

He is 13-1/2 and has a stage 4 - 5 heart murmur but he doesn't seem to be
affected. He has slowed a little bit but I don't know if it is due to his
age or the murmur. The decision is easy. What is the point of his living
longer if the price to pay is stomach pain 3 days a week? It seems to me
that is something humans would do to other humans.