My Cavalier is prone to heart issues. Does she need heart supplements?

A good quality essential fatty acid supplement, such as DermCaps or EicosaCaps, will promote healthy skin and coat. A quality multi-vitamin such as Pet Tabs, VetriScience tabs or NuPro can be added to a quality diet. Recommended joint supplements include Welactin, Dasuquin or Cosequin. The most important factor is to keep Mila lean and active. Obesity and inactivity will negatively impact her life and may shorten it. Regular veterinary care, especially echocardiograms when she is older, may identify any conditions early.

Royal Canin diets are all formulated with pre-biotics which help support a health gut bacteria. You could add in an additional probiotic but you may not see a huge amount of benefits BUT it will not hurt anything. Purina makes a very nice probiotic called FortiFlora and that would be the one I recommend. The Bio-Cardio may be beneficial but to the best of my knowledge, no testing has been done to know for sure if this is effective or not. Royal Canin does make a diet specific for Cavaliers that has additives for heart heath. They also make a diet for pets with heart disease or even just heart murmurs. They have done some studies indicating that these diets do impact heart health. Your fatty acid supplement does help to maintain heart health through its natural anti-inflammatory properties. I would recommend to look into the other diets and discuss with your vet if these may be good option for Chloe. I hope this helps and thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Unfortunately, this Coq10 will not prevent her from getting heart disease. There's no harm in giving it to her, but as you've said, the cavalier King Charles spaniel is prone to heart disease genetically. Supplements do not change her genetics, but you can help her heart health by making sure she isn't obese and has plenty of exercise.

A dog that is fed a well balanced complete diet for the size of his breed, will not need any supplements at all. If you add supplements you will upset the balance of the diet. Unless your dog is lacking certain minerals or vitamins (proven by a blood test) I do not recommend you feed a supplement. Keep feeding a good diet and all should be well.

There isn't any scientific proof that these supplements work, it's more anecdotal evidence. If you want to streamline them, I probably would suggest removing the ones for her heart. Supplements won't changes her genes fi there is a genetic predisposition to them. I will include a link to an article you may find help and interesting on supplements in pets: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-top-ten-pet-supplements-do-they-work/

Unfortunately, many Cavalier King Charles Spaniels experience heart disease at some point in their lives. Since Tabitha was diagnosed with mitral valve disease (MVD), I assume that she had an echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) performed by a veterinary cardiologist, as this is the only way to confirm this diagnosis. Good for you for doing your research about this condition. You are correct - more recent studies have shown a benefit to starting dogs with *severe* MVD on pimobendan (Vetmedin) prior to the onset of congestive heart failure. Again, if Tabitha has not yet been evaluated by a veterinary cardiologist, it would be best to do so prior to starting any medication to determine the severity of her MVD, as well as any potential concurrent heart issues not overtly apparent. I hope this helps and that all goes well!

As long as you are feeding a complete and balanced diet commercial dog food, you don;t need to worry about those types of supplements unless Remy has some sort of pre-existing condition. For normal, healthy aging dogs, the most common supplements are joint health (I recommend Adequan and Dasuquin) and omega 3 fatty acids for pets. I hope this helps and please feel free to post any additional questions.