will a dog with a grade 5 heart murmour need medication?

i am rescuing a beagle from the beagle welfare, and when i was looking i noticed a 12 week old male called Elmo. I fell in love with him straight away, and after people look at my house on sunday i am free to choose a dog i want to adopt. i was thinking of adopting Elmo, until i learnt he had a grade 5 heart murmour. I already have a dog on medication, costing me £50 a month, so cannot really afford another if he required medication too. Could anyone tell me more about heart murmours, and if they require any operations or medication which could be costly?

Murmurs are graded from 1-6, 6 being the most severe--so a grade 5 murmur is pretty significant. If surgery or medication is possible, it's likely to be costly. If you're still interested, ask if you can have the puppy examined by your vet to get his/her thoughts before deciding whether to adopt or not.

You need to ask a Vet. There are not any Vets here, and no one here can answer your question with any knowledge.

The medication will be quite expensive, you will also need to limit some of his exercise and he will need to be checked by the vet on a regular basis. The vet will check and see how his oxygen level reading is.I have an old poodle who is 17 and he has been treated for his heart murmur for several years. The medication is quite expensive but it does help him a lot. No surgery was available for him but his oxygen level is down to 46 which is really bad. He does not appear to be in any pain and he was extremely active until about 2 years ago, now he mostly lays around, sleeps a lot but enjoys being petted. Had I know he had the murmur I would not have adopted him some 10 years ago.Its a judgment call on your part on Elmo, he may go for years and do fine but only a good check up by your vet can tell you the prognosis for him.

Difficult to answer without knowing what is causing the murmur. A murmur just tells you that there is abnormal blood flow in the heart. Sometimes you can have a large defect with a mild murmur, and sometimes a mild defect with a severe murmur - which means you often can't make a diagnosis on murmur severity alone.A very young dog like Elmo may have a ventricular septal defect ( hole between the ventricles). This can cause a really loud murmur - but the defect often closes over, leaving no problem and no murmur.On the other hand, he may have been born with a less easily fixable heart defect in which case all bets are off.The best answer is to get a cardiologist to look at him, listen to the murmur, then probably do ecg and cardiac ultrasound (or possibly xrays) to diagnose the cause of the murmur. Once you have that, you know whether the treatment options are A surgery, B medical management or C leave it and it'll come right on its own.That's the best answer, but not the most practical one in your case. Would the beagle welfare consider sponsoring a visit to a cardiologist? (I suspect the answer will be no but it's worth a thought). Insurance will likely exclude a heart condition as it was pre-existing.Whatever happens, if you take him on, you will have to be prepared to put your hand in your pocket a lot more than with a 'normal' dog. Best case scenario is the problem is self-fixing - worst case he needs thousands spent on him to make him right.Might be worth a chat with your regular vet to get their take on it.Good luck!

would think so ask the vet