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 Checking Your Dog's Heart
Certainly you're not equipped to detect subtle abnormalities such as a heart murmur, but you can read major signs of danger if you know how.
Normally, a dog's heart will beat between 100 and 140 times a minute.
The easiest means of checking this is to feel the beat through the chest wall on the left side, just behind the point of the elbow. In larger breeds, such as Saint Bernards and Newfoundlands, with massive chest wall, this may not be possible - the femoral midway along the line where the thigh and pelvis are joined.
You can feel the blood pulsing through the artery by placing your fingers over it and lightly pressing from the outside with your thumb. Normally, you will feel a strong, bounding pulse.
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