Heart failure is simply when the heart fails to work appropriately. So the heart is just a big pump that pumps blood from the body back into the lungs, where it's oxygenated, and then back into the heart, where the heart pumps it back into the body, where we can use it again. And so congestive heart failure occurs when that blood does not flow appropriately.

If it is an enlarged chamber, we may put them on medication to help that heart squeeze better. If it were due to an enlargement around the heart, such as pericardial effusion, we could run specialized tests to relieve that pressure.

Good question. An enlarged heart is, to put it simply, a big heart, but the big heart can be due to various reasons, and finding out that reason is important because it could weigh in on different prognoses. So it could either be an enlarged chamber of the heart or an enlargement around the heart.

That's a great question. Recently, studies show that feeding your dog a grain-free diet can cause problems and lead to heart disease, whereas that pet would have not previously been susceptible to that.

Cardiomyopathy is a condition of the heart muscle.