What’s your pet’s SRR?

SRR is an acronym for your pet’s sleeping respiratory rate. The SRR is a very powerful tool that you, the pet owner can undertake in your own home. It can help detect the onset of/or improve the monitoring of left sided congestive heart failure (CHF) in both dogs and cats.

Many of the common heart diseases lead to left sided congestive heart failure. When pressure in the top left heart chamber increases and blood backs up into vessels within the lung, it results in blood accumulating in the lungs. This fluid, referred to as pulmonary oedema, causes an increase in your pet’s respiratory rate.

How do you monitor sleeping respiratory rate?

The measurement should be done when your pet is asleep in a normal environment (not too cold, not too hot).
Repeat the measurement over 2-3 days (to get a baseline variation), and then ongoing monitoring should happen once or twice a week.
Normal SRR in dogs and cats is less than 30 breaths per minute, often in the high teens or low 20s.
When to seek veterinary advice?

If your pet has an underlying heart disease and their SRR is consistently greater than 30 breaths per minute, your pet could be developing congestive heart failure and you should seek veterinary advice as soon as possible.

It’s important to note that an elevated SRR can sometimes be caused by high blood pressure, anaemia, pneumonia, heat stress or a fever so a veterinary check up is always warranted.

If you are ever worried about your pet you should ask us for advice.