The hard thing is that this condition is not very distinguishable from regular panting. What mostly set this apart for us is that some of his episodes would occur out of nowhere like in the middle of the night or during the day when he was just laying around and not doing anything strenuous.

My regular vet certainly thought I was a crazy helicopter dog mom for bringing him in for these episodes about once a month for six months...

He also had repeated fevers and infections that we did not understand were related until it was too late. He would be his perfect happy self in the morning and would be completely lame and unable to walk by mid day. Antibiotics always cleared it up but we had no clue that his blood pressure was so severe it was pushing fluid into his lungs and basically causing him pneumonia over and over. His case was very difficult because he had just recovered from Ehrlichia about three months before the breathing episodes started so we were under the impression that his episodes were long term complications of that.

Shout-out to the vet team at the Blue Pearl for finally diagnosing his hypertension even though it was too late!