I brought Lucky and Sparky to the Nationals today for the heart clinic.
Sparky was fine, but Lucky has a grade 2 murmur. No meds yet, no restrictions on anesthesia. I had an echo done at the clinic and am getting baseline chest x-rays, blood pressure etc. done at my vet and then we'll repeat the echo in a year.
Lucky was six on 6/19. I know the statistics, so I wasn't really surprised, but it is still sad news to hear!
I've been working hard to keep them both trim ... any other advice for slowing the progression of this horrible disease?
It sounds like, thus far, you have done just about everything you should have been doing. Taking your cavaliers to heart clinics annually is important. Once a murmur is detected, re-checking the dog's heart annually or even more often than that, is important.
The advice you have been given about no medications and no restrictions on anesthesia are the current consensus advice for a cavalier with a minor murmur, and yes, a grade 2 out of 6 murmur is minor. The fact that Lucky apparently did not have a murmur by his fifth birthday means he does not have early-onset MVD, which statistically progresses faster than MVD with a later onset. But still, no one can predict how fast Lucky's MVD will progress. It is possible that it will not progress much at all.
Here is much of what we have been doing with our cavaliers:
-- As you are doing, we try to keep our dogs slender, in the "ideal" range of 4/5 in the 9-point body condition system.
-- We try to exercise our dogs daily. We have trained most of them and competed them in agility. A few of them have not enjoyed agility, so their main exercise is walking on a leash or running around the fenced part of our property.
-- We feed species-appropriate foods. That means fresh, human-grade meats and vegetables, and no or limited grains. That means no dry dog food and being particular about what canned foods we choose. Most of our dogs' meals are home-prepared raw diets, but there are some really good canned foods that meet our standard of "fresh, human-grade meats and vegetables, and no or limited grains".
-- We add to their meals some cardiac supplements. Our list is here:
http://cavalierhealth.org/diets.htm#Cardiac_Supplements but which of those we give depends upon how far the MVD has progressed. At the grade 2 stage, we add vitamins C and E, CoQ10, fish oil, Thorne's Bio-Cardio, and Standard Process' Canine Cardio Support. Even for cavaliers with no murmurs, we give vitamins C and E, CoQ10, and fish oil.
I know there are cardiologists and others who poo-poo vitamin C and E, but all of the supplements we give our cavaliers have been recommended to us by one or more of our veterinarians.