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Our dog is mini-schnauzer who is female, neutered, and about 8 yrs old. She is probably a little over weight but has big frame--is not a "mini" really...
The vet has always given her a clean bill of health as far as disease...but she has developed a strong fear of thunder storms in past couple of years that has gotten stronger...
IF the storm starts after we have gone to bed (and she sleeps on our bed), and there is thunder/lightening she will often wake up and start panting heavily....and takes her a while to calm down...sometimes we have to get up and go into a windowless room or take a tranquilizer...
Last night though she woke up and started panting heavily and there was NO storm...this is maybe the second time she has done this w/o any reason that we can think of...
My husband came to bed after I did and he said she might have been under the covers at some point but was not sure if she was overheated or not
Anyone have any suggestions for why she might be doing this?
I don't think she has done the same thing (heavy panting w/o reason) during the day...
We had another min schnauzer years ago who had heart problems and had to be put too sleep...
could this be sign of her having heart trouble?
I would take her to the vet for a complete senior exam including blood work. It could be that she was just hot but heart condition is possible and it would be better to either rule that out or find out and get her on medication.
I too have a dog with severe thunder phobia (and a Thundershirt didn't help her) and with her doggy hearing can detect a storm as much as an hour before I hear a thing.
I might just be that she was hearing far off thunder from a storm that didn't pass directly by your home. This is what has happened with my girl a few times. If I go to one of the weather sites on my computer and look at the radar I will see that there is a storm passing to the north and not a drop of rain falls here but she's detecting it.
I hope that's all it is, not something of a much more serious or long lasting nature.
We did have some rain storms in the general area but not really that close to us--
we only woke to drizzle...but that could be possibility--
she can be very attuned to factors preceeding storms--like barometric pressure changes--that oppressive nature that you can feel sometimes before a storm...that can make her cower/become scary vs just be quiet/resting...
I posted intially before she work up this AM and she seems fine now--was playing, acting normally this AM
My husband said he thought she just got too hot--was really crowding him in bed and probably had some of the covers on her...though she just had to cool off...
when our other dog showed signs of heart trouble he just started passing out while standing up--
and she is not doing anything like that
I would say it was an anxiety attack. We had a wire fox terrier who developed night anxiety issues when she was 13. She was crate trained all her life and suddenly had anxiety issues and wouldn't sleep in the crate after the anxiety started. We had to drug her every night with Xanax.
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