Canine Cardio Clinic Date: May 17th, 2008 Time: 8:00 am to 1:00 pm Location: Chesapeake Veterinary Cardiology Assoc (CVCA) 140 Park Street SE, Vienna, VA 22180 | Tel: 703-281-7717 Website/Directions: Chesapeake Veterinary Cardiology Pre-Registration Required! This is a screening clinic only - dogs with known problems should make an appointment to see their regular cardiologist. This clinic offers the Echocardiogram with Auscultation, see registration form below for more details. Please download the form below and follow instructions to register. The form gives information for online registration also (online registration does require payment by PayPal/Credit Card via the button below). Click here for a Registration Form! You can make payment via PayPal using your major credit card or PayPal account. If you don't have a PayPal account, you can use the selection on the lower left to use any major credit card - just click this Pay Now button to start! Please consider making a donation (using the link below) to help us provide testing for a DAR&E foster dog. (In the event there are not enough dogs to hold the clinic, all donations will be put toward vet bills for these dogs!) Dilated Cardiomyopathy - What Can Be Done Now? Read comments from a Doberman Cardio Patient! Dear Dobercousins: Please talk to your mom about the cardio clinic coming up on June 10th. It just may be the one visit that will extend your life the way it has mine. Without this clinic, I just might not be here today. My mom decided to take me last November when I had just turned 8. She never dreamed for a moment I was in the early stages of cardio. Now you don’t have to mature to come down with cardio. My mom has a friend who has a Dobergirl that diagnosed at age 2. She is now 5 years old and doing just fine. The secret is to be diagnosed as early as possible. These wonderful doctors have extended my life and hopefully I will have a lot longer time with my mom and brother. I am on meds that have eased my labored breathing and cut back on my coughing and vomiting. I can still go on walks and am enjoying my life as before. It has not slowed down my monitoring the neighborhood from the back porch too much. I go for my 6 month check up next month. A huge thanks to all these wonderful volunteers at DAR&E for working with these great people at Chesapeake Veterinary Cardiology. It doesn’t hurt one bit and it cost a lot less than the vet cost elsewhere. Not only will mom/dad be helping you, but you will be supporting DAR&E as well. So Dobercousings get the word out – your life just might depend on it. My mom tells me every night how grateful she is to have me in her life and then I get tons of kisses. Hannah Harris, the Blue Doberchild Read comments from Dobe owners on Cardio: I recently lost my big red goofus, Jesse, to dilated cardiomyopathy. From everything I've read by researchers studying cardio in Dobermans, approximately 50% of all Dobermans will succumb to some form of cardio between the ages of 3 and 15. My boy was one of the younger ones. My two Dobes had yearly full blood tests done to check for incipient problems. They also were in the Holter Monitor program at Guelph University and they got their Echos. Both tests check for different kinds of heart disease. If it hadn't been for an Echo on a supposedly perfectly healthy Jesse, the DCM would not have been discovered before he went into congestive heart failure or dropped from Sudden Death and I would not have had a couple of extra, symptom free, years with him on minimal inexpensive meds (even if you do not use the extra supplements for heart disease). I urge everyone to take advantage of the Cardio Clinics we have and to enroll into the Holter study and to have yearly full blood tests done (our Health Clinics). The pain to you of finding out ahead of time that your dog is affected is far outweighed by the extra symptom free years you give to your companion. It hurt when I was told that Jesse had DCM but it hurt far more when Carmen's liver disease was missed until it was too late and she was in end stage. Instead of having extra years with her, I had 17 months of intense supplementation to keep her as healthy as possible. With Jesse I was able to give him extra symptom free years of being a big red dufus before his world crashed in on him. ~~Alla McGeary In the fall of 2004, on a lark, I took my “kids” to the cardio clinic offered by DAR&E and Chesapeake Cardio. I have two dogs; one very healthy boy (or so I thought) and one very “complex” girl (healthwise). I signed up figuring that, if either dog would be diagnosed, it would be the girl, but, considering what a great deal it was (practically two for the price of one) I took them both. Well, the doctor took my “healthy” boy in first and was shocked at how bad his heart was! The girl (the unhealthy one) only has a very mild heart condition. We were lucky in her case to have caught it early. Thanks to the doctors at Chesapeake, we were able to catch and treat their conditions. I truly believe that if I had not had the heart screen done, my male would be dead today. ~~Elizabeth Hackley In April of 2000, I lost my Jazzy to Dilated Cardiomyopathy. He'd been in to his regular vet for something unrelated on a Monday and that Thursday was his 7th birthday. On Sat, I called my vet crying, saying he had cardio - he was coughing mildly and I tried to attribute that to the new foster dog and he'd probably gotten kennel cough but in my heart, I knew something was amiss. My vet told me that I was just being a worrier, that he had just seen Jazzy. That Monday, I took him in and he took one look at him and said, "you're right, he's in congestive heart failure". We took him to the local specialists, and tried to treat him but he never ate again, we never really got him stabilized and we had to let him go to the Bridge less than 3 weeks later. I will always wonder what might have been if we had known earlier. With my next boy, I had him echo'd just as a baseline when he was 2 at a DAR&E clinic, and it helped later to make decisions when he developed lymphoma and had to undergo chemo. Please, please, get your dogs echo'd and enroll in the holter monitor study at Guelph. ~~Colleen Taylor When my Tucker came into DAR&E as a stray, the vet's noted he had a heart murmur. Knowing that heart problems are high in Dobermans, I jumped at signing him up for DAR&E's Cardio Clinic to get a baseline. The staff at CVCA were great, and the process relieved me of fears of Dilated Cardiomyopathy, but also let me know I still needed to keep an eye on his heart. Nine months later I took him back in for a follow up (a wee bit worse shape, but not significant) at CVCA and will continue annual echos to catch any new problems early...while there's still time to treat and possibly extend his life. Two years after his first echo thru DAR&E's Cardio Clinic: Because of his results from DAR&E's cardio clinics, I've been watchful for signs of heart problems. Sadly, my boy Tucker was diagnosed this summer (2006) with Dilated Cardiomyopathy, but because of the cardio clinics, I had a baseline for comparison and am now giving this boy lots of TLC (and meds) to make living with heart problems a little easier. I highly recommend any dog (and especially Doberman) owners to take advantage of this clinic! ~~Shannon Grace For those of you who don't know me, My husband Cory and I have two dogs adopted through DAR&E : Emmy (a dobie mix) and Indy (a natural eared and tailed boy). I started vet school today, which was exciting, but my day suffered an abrupt turn when my own DAR&E dobermutt, Emmy, was diagnosed with Dialated cardiomyopathy. She also has an arrhythmia and VPCs (Ventricular premature complexes) as complicating factors. I had her seen as an urgent care appointment today because she started coughing over the weekend, especially at night. She will be 5 in November (if she makes it that long), and she's always been a happy, healthy, active dog. She's just started a combination of 3 meds to help alleviate the causes of the coughing, but as you know, there is no cure for her they can only hope to slow the progress of the disease and treat the symptoms. So far, she seems to be comfortable. Of course, We are devastated! We will of course always treasure our good times together and will be cherishing her every moment we have left. Because she's only part Dobie, the vets at the teaching hospital are at a loss as to how her disease will progress. 50% of DObies at this stage will die in 6 weeks. Other breeds live 4-6 months beyond this. We'll see how she does. We hope she responds well to the meds so she will be comfortable and happy as long as possible. I'm sharing my story to help drive home the importance of the periodic cardiac health screenings that DAR&E organizes.Emmy showed no symptoms before this Saturday night. The vets said that is a classical case: a dog with a sudden onset of this coughing, especially at night/times of rest. Her heart is already HUGE! It looks like a big basektball inside her chest. I hope none of your furkids ever have this devastating disease, but just in case, I'd urge you to have them checked. I've already scheduled Indy for a screening. Better to catch it early.... ~~~ Julie Sanders