Re: [pyrnet] Strokes and heart attacks.

["Stephanie Whitney" <srwhitney1@earthlink.net>]

> 
Thank you both, Julie & Linda for the explanations.

> Did you do an autopsy?

No.  He was 14 1/2.  

  Did the vet diagnose congestive heart failure? 

Yes.  He and his brother had both been on heart meds for a couple of years
after 
being diagnosed with congestive heart failure.  I had originally brought
one of them in coughing, thinking that he had something like kennel cough.

 Dogs
> can die of a number of things that result in what looks like a terrible
> event. Especially when they are old. He may have died of heart failure but
> that is not the same thing as what we call a "heart attack" which is a
> violent event generally connected to an ill functioning heart of some
sort.
> Often problems of which we are not aware.  Clogged arteries, plaque etc.
> Dogs do not get these conditions and so don't have "heart attacks".  His
> heart failure, if that is what it was, may have been the end act in some
> other disease process or bodily failure.  Are you sure that he did not
have
> some heart malfunction or malformation of which you were not aware?  

They were littermates.  Both were diagnosed with congestive heart failure
and enlarged hearts at about 13. They were taking various meds, and it
became harder and harder to control the coughing.  I had given the one who
died first his brother's medicine accidentally the day before he died and
the emergency vet assured me that it wouldn't harm him.  So that jolt with
extra heart meds is probably a factor.  My vet said that his heart must
have been much worse than we knew or it wouldn't have killed him, though. 
It looked quite violent and like he was in pain, so I assumed that it was
something like a heart attack rather than just heart failure.  His brother,
whose condition seemed to be worse and was taking twice as much medicine
and more kinds of medicine lived another 3 months. 
    
Strokes
> OTOH can be quite the same in dogs as they are in people.
> 

Again, thank you for the explanations.

--- Stephanie, Ciaran, Anais & Maggie
--- srwhitney1@earthlink.net