Anyone have a dog with congestive heart failure?
Our awesome dog was diagnosed with MVD (mitral valve disease) and now has progressed to congestive heart failure, within two months of detecting the murmur. He is now on meds and responding well to them. I don't know how long he'll be with us and am grateful for every day he is here. He just turned 8 years old.
I've now adjusted to the shock of it all, but it still hurts to think that this disease is progressive and won't go away.
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Our old, large lab is a new dog now. Not exactly puppy like but he is more engaged, has stopped the coughing and looking like he was scared all the time. I finally put it all together when he would wake up in the night and get all scared acting and panting hard. D'oh. He would have been better served by a smarter owner.
Our little beagle mix is really old, we don't know exactly how old but older than the lab. She snores really badly, not exactly diagnostic, but was getting the same type of cough. We took her in for some routine stuff and asked the vet about her maybe having a similar condition. She told us to just try the meds instead of putting her through all the tests the lab had and see what happened since she trusted our knowledge of what had been going on with her. She seems very content now, more than before. It is not as significant as it was with the lab though.
I think you may find you have more years than you think but then we all know how things can change. I hope you find many more years, we are all always hoping for that. 
our vet knows my cry well. We keep too many dogs, we go through this every few years 
I think she prepares herself before coming in. Our old vet would come to our house when one needed to be helped out of the pain. The minute it was over he would wrap his arms around me and cry with me. He was the best ever.
Yup, those ugly cries are never really controllable are they?
I am sorry. If he had not had this in his last exam you must have caught it early. That is a very good thing with CHF and that should hopefully slow down the valve leakage.
Our first, Kelly, had her murmur detected at age 8, and responded well to meds, too - Lasix & Enalapril, IIRC. Our second Cavalier, Abby, who is now 7, had her murmur diagnosed at age FOUR. Needless to say, as much as I adore this breed, she'll be our last Cavalier. This breed is just too messed up for words. Our neighbor's Cavalier was just diagnosed with syringomyelia at age two, after she had surgery for a luxating patella the month prior. I went to visit them, and the dog got so excited that I was at the door, that it caused a flareup and she was literally screaming in pain. I've never heard a sound like it in my life, and hope never to hear it again. No more Cavaliers for us unless and until science learns how to do some major gene splicing or whatever to get rid of the multitude of problems that plague these wonderful, faithful, dogs. Breeders suck.
Getting back to Kelly, our first, I'll let you know how things progressed, and if you don't want to know how long she was with us after the diagnosis, stop reading NOW 
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She lived happily until she was 11.5, and then things started going downhill rather quickly. We put her to sleep at 11.75 years old. One day, she just looked at me as if to say, "Enough, Mom." I made an appointment for that Friday, and on that day, gave her a whopping big bowl of chicken and then after that, vanilla ice cream. She was a magnificent dog.