Monitoring Heart Failure at Home: Are Smart Collars Worth It?

How do you really monitor your pet’s heart disease at home? This is a question many owners struggle with. It is not just about what happens in the clinic or during an emergency: it is about what happens in your living room, day after day, where the most important clinical information actually originates.

If your pet has congestive heart failure (CHF), or is at risk of developing it, you have likely heard your vet discuss the importance of the sleeping respiratory rate (SRR). We also constantly ask about activity levels, and subtle behaviour changes. These clues are incredibly powerful, but in the real world, they are also difficult to measure accurately over long periods. I know personally how difficult it can be to actually answer these types of questions about my own pet. This is where tracking collars and smart monitors enter the conversation.

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Why Home Monitoring Matters

When pets develop heart failure, the early warning signs of a relapse or deterioration happen at home, often days before anything obvious is noticed. Pets are remarkably stoic: they do not gasp for breath or clutch their chests like humans do. Because they are efficient athletes with four legs and powerful hearts, changes in exercise ability are often not obvious to us “slow coaches” until the disease is advanced.

Instead, you might notice tiny “red flags”:

• Restlessness at night or sleeping more lightly.

• Slowing down earlier on walks.

• Taking longer to recover after exercise.

• Subtle increases in breathing rate while resting.

For cats, these signs are even harder to detect because they exercise in short bursts, often away from our gaze or at night time, and tend to hide outward signs of distress entirely.

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The Limitations of Traditional Monitoring

1. Counting Sleeping Respiratory Rate (SRR)

Monitoring the SRR is the single most reliable home-monitoring tool for detecting CHF. Clinical data shows that home breathing rates taken while a pet is sleeping are nearly as effective as x-rays and expert ultrasound in detecting heart failure.

However, this “gold standard” only works if the pet is in a deep, relaxed sleep. Many pets wake up or shift position the moment they sense their owner is watching them. If you are counting while the pet is merely resting rather than sleeping, the data is less reliable.

2. Tracking Activity by “Gut Feel”

Humans are generally poor at detecting slow, gradual trends. If a pet becomes 10% less active over three weeks, it often goes unnoticed because day-to-day variation masks the drift. In veterinary cardiology, these slow drifts are often the first sign that something is brewing.

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Can Tech Help? The Role of Smart Collars

Most have now come across the smart watches and other wearables for people that can prove invaluable at monitoring the kinds of things. But did you know there were similar devices now made for pets?

There are many options available on the market, such as Maven, Invoxia, PetPace, Whistle, Tractive, PawFit, Kippy etc. Most were designed for GPS tracking, but some provide genuinely helpful signals for pets with cardiac disease.

Traditional vs. Tech-Assisted Monitoring

What Smart Collars Can and Cannot Do

Smart collars are excellent at tracking activity levels objectively and detecting changes in sleep quality. In some cases, they can estimate resting respiratory rates and resting heart rates and present this as a trend line rather than a basic snapshot.

However, it is vital to remember what they cannot do:

• They cannot diagnose heart failure, or arrhythmias.

• They do not replace the need for an echocardiogram, which remains the gold standard for diagnosis and staging.

• They cannot tell you if your pet needs more furosemide (diuretics).

Think of them like smoke detectors: they do not tell you exactly what is burning, but they tell you that something is not right.

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The Real Value: Spotting the Trend

The power of this technology is in the trend, not the individual number. For example, a pet developing fluid in the lungs (pulmonary oedema) often shows a “baseline” breathing rate that creeps up over several days.

When using these devices, they typically do a lot of counting throughout the day. I advise people focus on the minimum data points, and maybe the mean. This usually reflects the true baseline level when the pet is at its most relaxed. If this baseline rises consistently, it is a trigger to contact your vet. Don’t worry so much if the maximum numbers go a little high, these likely represent a false high reading and are not representative of the baseline SRR.

Clinical Alert: A consistent SRR of >30 bpm or a 20% rise from your pet’s unique baseline is a significant cause for concern.

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How to Use Tech in a Clinical Plan

If you choose to use a smart collar, it should be part of a partnership with your vet.

1. Continue manual SRR counts: Use them to “ground-truth” the collar’s data.

2. Watch the trends: Small, consistent changes over 10 days are more meaningful than a single high reading.

3. Consult your professional: Use the data to have better conversations with your vet. For example: “His night-time restlessness has doubled this week”.

4. Never change medication alone: Adjusting doses of drugs like furosemide or pimobendan must only be done under veterinary guidance.

Verdict: Are They Worth It?

If your pet is at high risk of developing heart failure:

• For example your dog has Stage B2 mitral valve disease
• Or your cat has Stage B2 HCM
• Or if they have previously suffered from heart failure

These devices can provide genuinely helpful insights. They make monitoring more objective and far less stressful for you. They help with anxious pets that don’t like being watched, or if they tend to sleep in unobserved locations or times.

I’ve had a lot of pet owners who have reported great success using these to help monitor their cat or dog, who were struggling with traditional SRR counting for various reasons.

I have been looking at the Maven smart collar specifically because it is currently the only consumer device with a published validation study on respiratory rate accuracy in dogs. But others are close behind. Take a look at our full comparison article here.

Ultimately, these tools make the “home part” of the job easier—and that is where half the battle against heart disease is fought.

10% Off links for collars mentioned:

Check out my video on the same topic if you want a more in depth explanation:

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