Resting respiratory rate in dogs: what's normal, what's not, and how to track it

The dog is asleep on the couch. His owner is crouched next to him with a phone timer, counting chest rises. Fourteen. Fifteen. They lose count when the dog shifts, and start over. They do this because the cardiologist told them to, because the dog has a murmur, because a resting respiratory rate above 30 breaths per minute means a call to the clinic first thing in the morning.

They have been counting by hand for months. They will miscount at least once tonight.

That gap between what a veterinarian asks a pet owner to do and what a pet owner can reliably do in their living room at 11pm is where your next product opportunity sits. If you sell pet health hardware, sell into veterinary clinics, or source wearable devices for your brand, resting respiratory rate is a metric you need to understand.

Not because it is trending. Because many vet offices use it as the single most sensitive home-monitoring tool.

What resting respiratory rate actually measures

Resting respiratory rate (RRR) is the number of complete breaths a dog takes per minute while lying still, awake but calm. Sleeping respiratory rate (SRR) is the same measurement taken while the dog is asleep. Both are used clinically. They measure different states and produce different numbers.

A prospective study of 190 dogs with subclinical heart disease, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Porciello et al., 2016), found that the mean sleeping respiratory rate was 16 breaths per minute, while the mean resting respiratory rate was 21 breaths per minute. That five-breath gap is consistent and clinically relevant.

For healthy adult dogs, the generally accepted normal range is 15 to 30 breaths per minute at rest or asleep, according to VCA Animal Hospitals, BluePearl Veterinary Partners, and the Cardiac Education Group. Rates below that range are fine as long as the dog is otherwise behaving normally. Rates above 30 breaths per minute while resting or sleeping, measured consistently, are considered abnormal.

The number varies by body size. Large dogs (over 20 kg) tend to breathe more slowly at rest, around 15 breaths per minute. Smaller dogs run closer to 25.

Here is the important takeaway. Normal is not a fixed number. It is a baseline that belongs to one specific dog.

Why this number matters more than most vital signs

Respiratory rate is the earliest home-detectable signal that fluid is building up in a dog's lungs. That fluid buildup is congestive heart failure (CHF), and it is the end stage of the two most common cardiac diseases in dogs: myxomatous mitral valve disease and dilated cardiomyopathy.

A study published in The Veterinary Journal (Ohad et al., 2015) measured sleeping and resting respiratory rates in 51 dogs and 22 cats with stable, medically controlled CHF. The median sleeping respiratory rate in the dogs was 20 breaths per minute. Only one dog exceeded 30.

BluePearl Veterinary Partners goes a step further. They define an abnormal reading as any increase of more than 20% above a dog's individual average resting respiratory rate, even if that number is still technically below 30. That means a dog whose baseline is 16 breaths per minute has a clinically meaningful change at 20.

This is what makes RRR different from other vital signs. A pet owner cannot take their dog's blood pressure at home. They cannot run an echocardiogram. They can count breaths. And veterinary cardiologists will make treatment decisions based on that count.

How pet owners are told to measure it today

The standard method, recommended by VCA, BluePearl, and the Cardiac Education Group, is manual counting:

Wait until the dog is asleep or calmly resting. Watch the chest. Count one complete rise and fall as one breath. Time 30 seconds. Multiply by two. Record the result. Do this at least once a day for seven days to establish a baseline.

It works. It also fails in specific, predictable ways.

The dog shifts position. The owner loses count. The dog is dreaming and twitching, which inflates the number. The owner counts while the dog is panting after a walk and records an artificially high rate. They forget to count for three days and have a gap in their log. They write the number on a sticky note that ends up in the recycling.

None of these are catastrophic errors. But they are consistent sources of noise in data that a cardiologist needs to be clean. A manual count gives you a snapshot. A snapshot is not a trend. And it is the trend that tells you whether a dog's heart is compensating or failing.

The opportunity for pet health brands

If you are a pet brand or a pet health company, this is the section that matters.

Millions of dog owners are being asked by their veterinarians to count breaths at home. The Cardiac Education Group handout is distributed across veterinary cardiology practices. Apps like Cardalis exist specifically to log these counts. The demand is clinical. The current solution is a human squinting at a rib cage in a dim living room.

Every pet health monitoring device sold as a "smart collar" or "fitness tracker" gets compared against this use case, whether the device was built for it or not. Pet owners who have been counting breaths by hand for three months type "dog respiratory rate monitor" into a search bar eventually. They are not browsing. They are looking for a device that does what their veterinarian asked them to do, more reliably than they can do it themselves.

That is a specific, motivated buyer. And most devices on the market right now cannot serve them.

Here is why. The majority of pet wearable devices in the current market use accelerometer-based motion tracking. They measure steps, activity levels, and sleep duration. Some of them report a respiratory rate figure derived from motion patterns. But accelerometer-derived respiratory rate and BCG-derived respiratory rate are not the same measurement, and the clinical utility is different.

An accelerometer detects body movement. It can infer breathing from the rhythmic motion of the chest wall during rest. That inference works reasonably well when the dog is perfectly still. It degrades when the dog shifts, stretches, or breathes shallowly. It produces a number, but the precision of that number under real-world home conditions is not the same as what a BCG sensor produces.

Ballistocardiography (BCG) measures the mechanical forces generated by the heart's ejection of blood with each beat. A BCG sensor on a collar detects micro-vibrations in the dog's body caused by cardiac activity and respiratory movement. The signal is physiological, not positional. That distinction matters when you are trying to catch a five-breath-per-minute change over three weeks that indicates early-stage fluid accumulation in the lungs.

What the PHH-23 does differently

The PuresPet PHH-23 is a wearable health monitoring device built around a BCG sensor architecture. It monitors heart rate, respiratory rate, body movement, and BCG waveform continuously, 24 hours a day. It generates HRV (heart rate variability) reports, sleep analysis, and health summaries, and flags abnormal readings for review through its companion app.

That last part is worth pausing on. The device does not just record. It flags. For a pet owner who has been counting breaths manually and wondering whether tonight's number of 24 is meaningfully different from last Tuesday's 19, an automated alert based on a deviation from an established individual baseline is a different product experience than a spreadsheet of daily counts.

The PHH-23 combines this health monitoring layer with 4G Cat.1 cellular connectivity, GPS positioning (GPS, BDS, AGPS, LBS, and Wi-Fi triangulation), trajectory tracking, and electronic fence alerts. It weighs 55 grams, runs on a 750mAh battery with roughly three days of runtime, charges magnetically, and carries CE and FCC certification.

From a sourcing standpoint: minimum order quantity is 100 units per color per size. Production lead time is 20 to 25 days. Customized sampling takes 7 to 10 days. PuresPet offers OEM and ODM services, meaning the hardware can carry your brand, with laser or screen-printed logos and customized packaging.

The design distinction matters. The PHH-23 was built around BCG monitoring first. The GPS and geofencing layer is additive to that foundation. Most combined devices in this category work the other way: GPS first, with health data as a secondary feature. The sensor architecture reflects which job the device was designed to do, and that is auditable in the data the companion app produces.

Who this product is for

The PHH-23 is sourced by pet brands and retailers who want to enter or expand in the pet health monitoring category without building hardware from scratch.

If you already sell GPS trackers and your customers are starting to ask about health monitoring, this is a single device that answers both questions. If you are launching a health-focused pet brand and need a device that produces respiratory rate, heart rate, and HRV data continuously (not a step counter with a health label), the PHH-23 is built for that use case.

The product is not positioned for the casual activity-tracking buyer who wants to see how many miles their dog walked today. It is positioned for the buyer who types "dog respiratory rate monitor" into a search bar because their veterinarian told them to track it, or for the brand that wants to sell to that buyer.

MetaTech Insights valued the pet health monitoring device market at $3.6 billion in 2024 and projects it to reach $15.5 billion by 2035, at a CAGR of 14.2%. The buyers entering this market over the next decade have already owned a GPS tracker. They know what activity data looks like. A meaningful segment of them will pay more for a device that monitors cardiovascular function and flags a real anomaly.

The commercial case for respiratory rate as a product feature

Pet health monitoring is shifting from "nice to have" toward "veterinarian recommended." Respiratory rate is at the center of that shift because it is the one vital sign that veterinary cardiologists already ask pet owners to track at home.

A brand that can say "our device tracks the same metric your cardiologist told you to monitor" is having a fundamentally different conversation with the buyer than a brand that says "see your dog's activity score."

Grand View Research projects the global pet wearable market will grow from $3.36 billion in 2025 to $11.40 billion by 2033, at a CAGR of 16.8%. Within that growth, health-monitoring wearables are the fastest-expanding sub-segment, driven by exactly the dynamic described above: pet owners moving from curiosity about their dog's activity to concern about their dog's physiology.

The PHH-23 lets you enter that segment with a finished, certified product. The OEM model means it carries your brand name. The BCG sensor architecture means the respiratory rate data it produces is derived from physiological measurement, not motion inference.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 40 breaths per minute too fast for a dog at rest?

Yes. A resting or sleeping respiratory rate that stays above 30 breaths per minute is considered abnormal, according to VCA Animal Hospitals and the Cardiac Education Group. A rate of 40 at rest is a clear signal to contact a veterinarian, especially if the dog has known heart disease. A single elevated reading after exercise, a hot day, or a stressful car ride does not count. The reading needs to be taken while the dog is calm and has been resting for at least 30 minutes.

Does breed affect a dog's normal respiratory rate?

It does. The AI-COLLAR study (Chetboul et al., 2025, Frontiers in Veterinary Science), which tracked 703 dogs with continuous biometric monitoring, confirmed that body weight and breed significantly influence resting respiratory rate. Larger dogs tend to breathe more slowly at rest (around 15 breaths per minute), while smaller dogs run closer to 25. Brachycephalic breeds (Bulldogs, Pugs, Boston Terriers) may show different breathing patterns due to their airway conformation, and their owners should establish an individual baseline rather than relying on population averages.

Can I use a smart collar to track my dog's respiratory rate?

Some smart collars report respiratory rate data, but the technology behind the measurement varies. Accelerometer-based collars estimate respiratory rate from chest wall motion. BCG (ballistocardiography) based devices like the PuresPet PHH-23 measure respiratory rate from the mechanical forces generated by cardiac and respiratory activity. The distinction matters when accuracy and trend detection are the goal, particularly for dogs with heart disease whose veterinarian has prescribed home monitoring.

What does a high resting respiratory rate in dogs mean?

A consistently elevated resting respiratory rate, above 30 breaths per minute while the dog is calm or asleep, can indicate fluid accumulation in the lungs. This is one of the earliest detectable signs of congestive heart failure, particularly in dogs with mitral valve disease or dilated cardiomyopathy. BluePearl Veterinary Partners notes that even a 20% increase above a dog's individual baseline can be clinically meaningful, even if the absolute number is still below 30. Other causes of elevated respiratory rate include pain, fever, anxiety, anemia, and respiratory disease.

How often should I check my dog's breathing rate?

For dogs with known heart disease, veterinary cardiologists typically recommend daily monitoring. Virginia Tech's veterinary teaching hospital asks participants in their mitral valve disease study to take resting respiratory rates once a day using the Cardalis app. For healthy dogs without cardiac concerns, periodic checks (a few times a week) are enough to establish and maintain awareness of a normal baseline. The Cardiac Education Group recommends measuring at least once a day for seven days initially to establish that baseline.

What is the difference between resting respiratory rate and sleeping respiratory rate?

Resting respiratory rate (RRR) is measured while the dog is lying still and calm but awake. Sleeping respiratory rate (SRR) is measured while the dog has been asleep for at least 15 minutes and is not twitching or dreaming. SRR tends to run lower. In the Porciello et al. (2016) study of 190 dogs with subclinical heart disease, the mean SRR was 16 breaths per minute and the mean RRR was 21 breaths per minute. Both are clinically useful. Cardiologists often prefer SRR because fewer variables (stress, ambient noise, alertness) affect the count during sleep.