How are heart murmurs in dogs diagnosed?

The primary way we hear them is with our stethoscope, and then we can do a test with an echocardiogram to figure out why that murmur is present.

A murmur is a sound we hear when we're listening to the chest. Typically, we'll find a murmur if we come in for exercise intolerance or a cough, and we listen to the heart and hear that extra sound between the beats. Or, we might pick up a murmur during a regular physical exam. Murmurs are graded from one to six, with one being the quietest and six the loudest.