My puppy fainted. Serious?
March 23, 2008 1:07 AM   Subscribe

This afternoon we took our 5 month old Boxer puppy to the local dog park for the first time. She got so excited as we approached, that she pulled and panted and pulled, then clearly fainted. What could be the apparent reason for this?

Some background: I live in Arizona, and it was about 83ยบ this afternoon. She had been in her crate the previous couple hours, and thus inactive. Our dog wears a martingale training collar, and weighs about 30 lbs. She has a super-faint heart murmur, but was just tested by a cardiologist last week and received a clean bill of health.

Happened like this: As we approached, she was loudly panting in her excitement. She pulls a lot (she is a boxer puppy) and all the sudden it seemed like she couldn't catch her breath and fell over into the dirt. She put her head back and groaned...
I picked her up to carry her to a water fountain and as she dizzily tried to look at my face, she released her bowels. I put her down and within 10 seconds she shook it off and continued to excitingly pant. Gulped some water, calmed down a bit, then went into the park.

For the rest of the day at the park she was acting normally and running around with all the other dogs.

Could this have just been fainting from over-excitement in warm weather? I intend to call my vet this week anyway, but just seeing if the Hive Mind has any similar experiences with their beloved canine companions.
posted by blastrid to Pets & Animals (16 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Glad your pup recovered!

Sounds like heat exhaustion bordering on heat stroke. Look up the symptoms and the first aid steps in case it happens again. Here is an article from About.com from a Phoenix resident: link. Other sites give more details about gum color and other warning signs.

It seems that excitement can have a role in heat exhaustion. Even humans get over-stimulated playing in the sun and don't know when to take a break!
posted by bonobo at 1:22 AM on March 23, 2008


Sounds more like narcolepsy than heat exhaustion, unless he was locked in a car for an hour on a that 83 degree day. The heat could exacerbate the problem, too. Has the pup been in exciting situations before, or was there something special about this experience (first time in a dog park, etc)? Maybe puppy has a very very mild case of narcolepsy. Here are some vids of poor pups with the condition.
posted by neuroking at 2:46 AM on March 23, 2008


Sounds like she just pulled to hard on her leash and choked herself enough to lose consciousness.

Is she leash trained fairly well?
posted by doppleradar at 6:34 AM on March 23, 2008


Yes, sounds like the dog asphyxiated herself. Train her not to pull.
posted by dobbs at 6:45 AM on March 23, 2008


I agree with doppleradar and dobbs. It looks like the dog choked while pulling on the Martingale collar. Even though they are gentle on their necks the collars still can cut off air supply when cinched too tight.
posted by shr1n1 at 6:50 AM on March 23, 2008


Response by poster: When we're walking around our neighborhood she's great on her leash--we use positive reinforcement with little tasty treats.

When she arrives for the first time to a dog park with TONS of distractions and excitement, yeah not so much...

Thanks for your input, but I really doubt it's narcolepsy. There was plenty to suggest it was a combination of heat exhaustion and asphyxiation. (sorta hot, excitement about first time being around that many dogs and people, etc). She then probably was just so scared she shat herself...
posted by blastrid at 8:50 AM on March 23, 2008


blastrid, once you have your dog trained without distractions, using distractions is the next step. You should, at first, take your dog to the park when there is the least number of dogs there and work on her paying attention to you and walking well on the lead. You can use playtime with the other dogs as the reward rather than food if you wish.

When I was training my dog, we'd walk towards the other dogs and anytime my dog pulled, I'd stop dead in my tracks and wait. The dog would still pull and want to go ahead but I stayed still. Eventually, the dog settled to a heel position (something he'd already mastered), and then we'd sally forth. If the dog walked well, we made it all the way to his friends and he got playtime, but if he didn't, again I'd stop. Sometimes we'd walk 300 feet, sometimes 2 feet before he pulled. Eventually, he understood that moving forward only happens when he behaves.
posted by dobbs at 9:00 AM on March 23, 2008


Keep in mind that snub-nosed dogs like Boxers have a harder time dealing with the heat.
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:23 AM on March 23, 2008


I foster boxers for rescue, and I've had great success with prong collars. They look barbaric, but they don't really hurt. I put one on and tried it, just applies an even pressue and it doesn't damage the trachea like choke chains. I'm not really an expert, but the prong collar helped me retrain some dogs quicker than anything else I've tried. Of course, it's only a collar for walks, they don't wear collars inside.

As an aside, we had a boxer get out of a martingale collar and she got ran over :( So I'm kind of biased against them.
posted by glip at 1:46 PM on March 23, 2008


If it was heatstroke she would not have recovered so quickly (seen it several times at the dogpark on hot days in other people's dogs. Mine are lazy so not a problem!) so I vote for her choking herself.

I'd just like to give another vote for the prong collar. They work great and actually teach the dog not to pull, even in exciting situations.
posted by fshgrl at 3:42 PM on March 23, 2008


I third a prong collar.
posted by Addlepated at 4:29 PM on March 23, 2008


We have very good experiences with a gentle leader. You will occasionally have to spend time educating people that it is not a muzzle.
posted by Daddy-O at 11:51 PM on March 23, 2008


Ugh. The pup is 5 months old. You don't need a choke chain and you definitely don't need a prong collar. Get yourself a good leather standard collar. Get yourself a clicker and a good book on clicker training. Harmless, easy, fun for the dog.
posted by dobbs at 1:28 AM on March 24, 2008


A choke chain is far different from a prong collar. Like glip posted above, prong collars might look like torture devices but they're not. They don't hurt the dog and they're excellent for hard-headed pups who like to tug on their leads. They have done wonders for my Labs.
posted by Addlepated at 7:03 AM on March 24, 2008


I second the gentle leader (or Halti, as it's branded over here). I've never had a short-snouted dog, however, so YMMV.

Just like Daddy-O says, many assume it's a muzzle because of the strap across the snout, despite the fact that the mouth is clearly not restricted in any way; some people are just plain stupid, I guess.
posted by macdara at 11:59 AM on March 24, 2008


I have a gentle leader too, and in my experiences with rescue boxers (albeit not lots) I found it far less effective, when I could even get a dog to wear it than the prong collar. To me it seemed to hurt the dog more when they reefed on the gentle leader than when they caused the prong to... but anyway, this isn't really too relevant to the question at hand.
posted by glip at 4:36 PM on March 24, 2008


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