High blood pressure readings at the veterinarian’s office can lead to an expensive workup that includes various blood screenings and other tests. After all, canine high blood pressure can be a sign of kidney disease and other serious conditions. But what if your dog simply has white coat hypertension — blood pressure that’s too high at the doctor’s office because of anxiety about being there but perfectly fine at other times?
The phenomenon definitely occurs. One study of retired racing greyhounds found that their systolic pressure (the first number in a blood pressure reading) averaged 24 points higher at the vet’s office than when taken at home by their adopters, putting them near or in the hypertensive range. Diastolic pressure (the second number in a blood pressure reading) was higher at the vet’s office, too.
Another report on dogs of six different breeds — Siberian huskies, Labrador retrievers, Doberman pinschers, golden retrievers, Bernese mountain dogs, and German shepherds — also found that blood pressure was higher when the vet took it than when it was taken at home.
Tufts emergency and critical care veterinarian Elizabeth Rozanski, DVM, offers three tips for helping your dog stay calm in the exam room to get an accurate reading:
1. Ask your vet to give your dog time to relax. People are not supposed to have their blood pressure taken at the doctor’s office until they have sat and relaxed for at least five minutes. It’s the same for a dog. He should feel comfortable with the vet and have calmed down some before she takes a reading.
2. Stay calm yourself. Remember, dogs receive information on how to feel about a situation from how we feel. If you show by your calm demeanor that having a cuff put around one of his limbs and having it inflate is no big deal, he’ll have a much better chance of seeing it as no big deal, too.
3. Ask the doctor to take your dog’s blood pressure more than once during the visit. Often, physicians will take a person’s blood pressure a second time during an office visit, more toward the end than the beginning, and the second reading is lower. It’s true for dogs, too. They become acclimated, and their blood pressure drops.
Normal blood pressure for a dog, by the way, is generally below 120/80, but up to 140 is okay.
Rocky, a patient at the Tufts Foster Hospital for Small Animals because of swallowing difficulties, gets his blood pressure checked on a hind leg. (He will have medications administered by catheter in a front one.)
