[HeyJude]

Hi there, I keep meaning to ask my vet who is a rottweiler owner this question but it slips my mind every time I see him. We have a wonderful 10 month old female rottie, my husband and I both work at home so we spend almost all our time with her and exercise, train and play several times a day. It may be a long walk in the mornings, a 20 to 30 minute training session, or a quick 10 minute kick of a ball around the yard three or four times a day during a break from work, or a swim in our pool which our girl loves best of all. She also has almost daily visits from the german shephard next door (her boyfriend) and they play, wrestle or chase each other in huge circles around our yard. So she gets heaps of exercise every day.

So after that very long intro, my question is about her panting after any of these activities, she is our first Rottie so I am not sure what is normal for the breed and cannot locate an answer on this forum or on other searches I have done. She pants big time, I mean really heavy panting, you can see her whole body 'thumping' in time to her heart beat and it sometimes takes a good 10 to 20 minutes for her to recover; then she sleeps - bless her!

We do live in a hot climate and she works hard at her training or playing I have just never seen any other dog pant so heavily. We always make sure there is plenty of water for her before during and after and she seems to drinks enormous quantities, we also stay out of the middle of the day sun and try to play in the shade when it is particularly hot.

Is really heavy panting normal for a rottweiler.

Thanks in advance for your response.