February is American Heart Month—not only for people, but for our furry friends, too! Regardless of whether you live in or outside of the USA, take some extra time this month to focus on your furry friend’s heart health and begin to build healthy habits that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

Heart disease is a dangerous and common health problem in cats. Unfortunately, due to cats’ ability to mask their pain, it’s not always easy to tell when something is wrong.

It can be scary and devastating to learn that your dog suffers from a dangerous heart condition like congestive heart failure. However, once you receive the diagnosis, another process begins: the routine care and management of your dog’s disease. For many pet parents, this process can be just as or even more challenging than handling the diagnosis itself.

One of the most commonly discussed dangers to pets is heartworm—a disease caused by parasitic worms that affect the heart, lungs and blood vessels of animals. Unlike worms that live in the gastrointestinal tract, heartworms find their way to your cat’s heart, blood vessels and lungs, where they can grow to around a foot long and cause damage. 

As a dog owner, you’re probably familiar with numerous intestinal parasites, such as the tapeworm or hookworm, but another common parasitic worm doesn’t affect your dog’s intestines—it affects its heart and lungs.

Cats are known for staring at their owners with wide, unblinking eyes. The amount of time we spend looking at our cat’s eyes each day might shock you, but it also makes it easier to spot problems. Eye issues, such as infections, swelling or hemorrhaging are usually pretty obvious and can be a tell-tale sign of a more serious, underlying health concern.

It’s every pet owner’s nightmare: your happy, playful puppy suddenly falls ill and requires intense veterinary treatment. Unfortunately, this scenario is a reality for far too many dog owners because of canine parvovirus, or parvo.

Heart disease in dogs is a commonly diagnosed condition. A dog’s heart, lungs, and blood vessels combine to form his circulatory system. The heart is the central player in this delicate circuit, and there are things that can go wrong, resulting in heart disease.

Your veterinarian has just diagnosed your cat with a heart problem. If this is the case for you, it is very likely that, upon physical examination, your cat had a heart murmur, a very fast heart rate, or an abnormal heart rhythm. Heart disease is common in cats but can be difficult to diagnose. One of the reasons for this is that cats are very good at hiding signs of illness, and feline heart disease in its early stages may produce very subtle or no signs.