Heavy breathing in dogs can be terrifying to experience, as it’s often a sign of an emergency. In this article, we’ll discuss how to identify heavy breathing in dogs, its potential causes, and when to consult a veterinarian.
Heavy Breathing in Dogs: When to Seek Emergency Help
If your dog is breathing heavily, they may be experiencing a medical crisis. While panting is normal to some degree, heaving breaths and wheezing are not. Other concerning symptoms include:
- Coughing or wheezing
- Pale or blue gums
- Eye or nose discharge
- Lethargy
- Weakness or collapse
- Vomiting or diarrhea
- Changes in appetite
- Bleeding or bruising of the skin
- Restlessness
- Swollen abdomen
If your dog shows these symptoms alongside their heavy breathing, they should see a veterinarian immediately. This may mean calling an emergency vet clinic to have them seen. Other signs that your dog needs emergency veterinary care are if they’re breathing heavily after an injury or have a resting respiratory rate of over 30 breaths per minute.
What Causes Heavy Breathing in Dogs?
There are several causes of heavy breathing in dogs, and they’re not all bad! For instance, a dog may breathe heavily after strenuous exercise or as a normal reaction to hot weather. That said, heavy breathing is usually a sign of an emergency. If your dog is breathing heavily with no obvious cause, you should call an emergency vet clinic for help.
Obesity
Obesity can cause dogs to breathe more heavily, especially after exercise. It can also contribute to asthma, which can also cause heavy breathing. However, obesity won’t cause dogs to start breathing heavily all of a sudden. If this behavior isn’t normal for your dog, look for other causes.
Excitement or Stress
When dogs are excited or stressed, they may pant. For instance, your dog’s respiratory rate may increase when you come home and they jump up on your legs, or when they’re hiding from fireworks that scare them. Too much stress can sometimes cause difficulties breathing, which is typically an indication of a severe anxiety disorder.
Exercise
If your dog has just played a long game of fetch or gone on a hike, they may pant or breathe heavily as they calm down from the exercise. However, this shouldn’t last for an extended period after exercising. If it does, you may have overexercised your pup, or they may be experiencing health problems.
Heart Disease
Heart disease, such as pulmonary edema, can cause increased blood pressure and fluid in the lungs. This can lead to rapid breathing, coughing, and swelling due to water retention.
Heartworm Disease
Heartworm disease is caused by parasites in the heart. Dogs catch heartworm disease when bitten by infected mosquitoes. The parasites may block the vessels between a dog’s heart and lungs, causing breathing difficulties, lung scarring, and even heart failure. If your dog is on heartworm preventative medication, it’s unlikely for them to contract it, but breakthrough cases are possible.
Pain
If your dog is in pain, they may breathe more heavily than normal. Pain can be caused by acute injuries or by underlying disease. Blood loss can also cause heavy breathing in dogs, whether external or internal. For instance, a ruptured tumor within the body can cause a dog to breathe rapidly.
Respiratory Problems
Respiratory problems that may cause heavy breathing include pneumonia and bronchitis. Both of these conditions may require hospitalization, especially if they have escalated to the point of heavy breathing.
Lung Problems
Of course, many health issues that affect the lungs can cause heavy breathing. These include:
Lung bulla: Air pockets in the lungs that make it difficult for the lungs to expand as your dog breathes
Lungworm: Parasites in the lungs
Pulmonary contusions: Bruising of the lungs
Pulmonary hypertension: High blood pressure in the arteries of a dog’s lungs
Your veterinarian will likely recommend imaging so that they can look more closely at your dog’s lungs and determine what’s causing their breathing difficulties.
Cancer
Cancers affecting a dog’s airway or lungs can cause breathing difficulties. Likewise, ruptured tumors can cause internal bleeding, which often leads to heavy breathing.
Cushing’s Disease
Cushing’s disease causes a dog’s adrenal gland to overproduce stress hormones, which can lead to heavy breathing and other symptoms such as urinary issues, dehydration, and bloating.
What is a Normal Respiratory Rate For Dogs?
A normal resting respiratory rate for dogs is around 15 to 30 breaths per minute. Over 30 breaths per minute (while a dog is at rest) indicates a medical emergency. Puppies tend to breathe a bit faster than adult dogs and may take as many as 40 breaths per minute while at rest.
To take your dog’s respiratory rate, simply set a timer for thirty seconds and count their breaths. Multiply your count by two to get their breaths per minute. Alternatively, you can time them for an entire minute and skip the math.
This is typically done while a dog is sleeping or resting to check whether they are breathing normally. We do not recommend waiting to check your dog’s resting respiratory rate if you think they are breathing too heavily. It’s a better use of your time to rush them to an emergency clinic as fast as possible.
However, periodically tracking your dog’s respiratory rate is useful as you’ll learn what’s normal for them and when to be concerned.
Heavy Breathing in Dogs: Diagnostics and Treatment
When your dog is breathing heavily, your veterinarian will likely want to examine them immediately. While there are sometimes long waits at emergency clinics in particular, these clinics triage the animals that come in, and breathing difficulties will typically bump your dog to the top of the list.
Your veterinarian will ask what other symptoms you’ve noticed at home. They may take a look at your dog’s gums, listen to their lungs or heart, and check their abdomen for pain or swelling.
Imaging, such as x-rays or ultrasounds, is a common next step, as it allows your veterinarian to either spot or rule out common causes of heavy breathing, such as ruptured tumors or lung problems. They may also order other testing as needed.
Treatment depends on your dog’s diagnosis, but will often require hospitalization to get your dog’s breathing back to normal and treat their underlying health problem.
