Keep the beat....

Here's an update on a lovely little doggy with a hear that skips a beat when it sees me. To be fair, it skips a beat when it sees anyone because it has a heart condition that interferes with the rhythm of it's heart.

Betty was a normal little active 8 month old Cross-breed pup charging around as normal but one evening last April she suddenly collapsed at home  and almost passed out. Her owners contacted us straight away and rushed her down to the surgery....

Hazel was on call that evening and she examined Betty head to tail despite the fact that she seemed to have recovered just fine and was wagging her tail quite happily. Everything seemed to be quite normal except a happy, playful pup who has had a frantic dash to vets should not have a heart rate of 40 beats per minute! It should be somewhere between 80-120 or possibly even higher.
A slow heart rate can be caused by a number of things but too much potassium in the blood is an important one as it can be life threatening if it gets too high. Thankfully this was ruled out by a quick blood test. Happy that Betty was in no immediate danger Hazel booked Betty in for an ECG.
I had the pleasure of attaching the leads to Betty, giving her opportunity to give my face a good cleaning with her overactive tongue. An ECG shows us the electrical activity of the heart and Betty's was really interesting as the picture above shows - the top half of Betty's heart was beating fine but the bottom half was only beating half the time! This is called "Second Degree Heart Block" and really needs investigating because 3rd degree heart block is life threatening.
Our visiting cardiologists confirmed our diagnosis and recommended Betty popped over to Liverpool Vet School Small Animal Teaching Hospital as it was likely Betty may require a pacemaker.
Betty had numerous trips to see the cardiology team at the University and even some trial medication to see if they could get her heart beating a bit more efficiently. However, Betty's heart condition got worse.
Eventually, Betty had another emergency trip to see us after collapsing again and thankfully Glynn was able to confirm she had started to show signs of 3rd degree blocking so got her an emergency trip back to the University where she had a pacemaker fitted.
A pacemaker is a device that sits under Betty's skin and a wire travels down her vein into her heart. It monitors her heart rate and if it detects it beating too slow it kicks in and takes over by stimulating the bottom of the heart to beat with a  small stimulus. Betty's been living a normal life with this device since August 2016 but will have regular check ups to see that everything is ok.
On her recent trip to see the specialists at Liverpool Uni and they have downloaded data from the pacemaker's memory and it has been controlling Betty's heart rate for about 60% of the time! Without the pacemaker Betty wouldn't be here today! 
All this work to keep Betty happy and healthy has cost a small fortune and thankfully Betty was insured with a reputable insurance company who have covered the vast majority of the costs. There is no way to predict these sorts of problems in pets and even animals as young as Betty should have insurance in place as she will require monitoring for the rest of her life.