I have use the polar heart rate monitor with chest strap on greyhound dogs, not sure it was the best as it did not always match my manual readings but was usually fairly close. Cannot monitor it real time on a computer, you can see on a watch what it is displaying. I have had some of the files be corrupted when I tried to download them off the watch too which was annoying... All up would give it a 6/10

Try the following one.

http://www.harvardapparatus.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_11051_10001_52709_-1_HAI_ProductDetail___

They definitely have for the small rodents like mice and rat, Please ask them for further specification to meet your requirements.

Good luck

We did some validity and reliability testing on Polar RS800CXto measure heart rate in dogs. There are always measurement errors I guess despite which device you will use. And in this case you will see what you need to think of if you have repeated measures.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23499770

Dear Dusanka,

We were using a special equipment on dogs that were developed for humans. We had to shave the fur in 3 spots in order to put on the electrodes. It did not work well in fat dogs and dogs being very "skinny". Measuring HRV is not easy, because dogs are either moving a lot :) or falling asleep...You can read more about it in our publications.

All the best,

Katalin

Nancy Williams, who is on the Animal Behavior Society Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist list uses heart monitor harnesses for dogs. I don't know the particulars, but I'm sure she would share her knowledge about them.

We have used a Polar Sport Tester monitor (Polar S610 tm, Polar Electro Oy, Finland). The transmitter was attached to a girth belt supplied by the manufacturer for its use in humans (model S-160) and adapted to sheep with a neoprene strip. One electrode was placed behind the scapula and the other electrode was situated on the ventral abdomen. To improve the reception of the signal, the electrodes were impregnated with ultrasound gel. The heart rate signal was telemetrically transmitted within a range of 1 m to the wrist monitor.

I can also recommend the Polar system for use with dogs. If you are interested in HRV make sure to purchase a model that records the R-R as not all models have this capability. As others above have stated we have had good luck with the RS800CX paried with the Polar Wearlink Strap. The drawback is that with this sytem you are not able to visualize the full ECG. In cases where we want this visualization we use a BioPac MP150 system which also has wireless capabilities.

In our group we work with the Polar RS800CX monitor and WearLink-Straps in pigs and dwarf goats. Using this system you are somewhat restrictet concerning the minimum size of the animals, and as it was developed for humans heart rates exceeding 240 beats per minute will not be detected. And you will probably have to shave your animals where the electrodes are, and might want to use electrode or ultrasound-gel to improve contact (in humans this is provided by sweat-I do not know how much sweat dogs produce). For the analyses (after corrections for artefacts with the software supplied by Polar) we started to use the Kubios software (http://kubios.uef.fi/), which is for free and quite easy to handle. The RS800CX requires WIndLink-transmitters for which you can also get a bluetooth-interface enabling online-measurements (i.e. measurements are displayed in approx. real-time on a computer).

Do you want to measure only acutely or chronic. If you want a stress free system you definitely might want implantable telemetry such DSI: datasci.com or jacketed telemetry.

Thus if you would reduce the stress effect and artifact that for HRV calculation if definitely a pain to be avoided if you want through data.

When trying to attach electrodes to sheep, we found that after shaving, the skin also needed to be cleaned of lanolin using an alcohol swab. Not doing this always resulted in poor contact of the electrodes and patchy readings. If you don't have access to a strap, several layers of bandaging worked well to secure the electrodes and wiring and was easy to adjust between animals.

I am interesting in using a non-invasive technique to obtain HRV data from dogs also, i.e. I do not want to shave/apply ultrasound gel to the dog. Therefore I wonder about Bioharnesses. Does anyone have any information on the use of these? I have found another useful study on the validity of the Polar RS800CX monitor if this helps anyone...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1558787811001808#

Thanks for the link Helena

Pulse-oximetry with an ear probe.

I will suggest Echocardiogram.

Just following this conversation.  Had a quick look at the Polar RS800CX monitor, but they're US $800/unit!!  We're wanting to do 30-40 sheep at a time, so this would be a huge expense!  Does anyone have experience with a less expensive option?  Perhaps a sensor that transmits to a single receiver that can handle a number of sensors transmitting.....??  (Like the boluses that measure rumen pH and temperature?

We collected very stable results with the BioHarness3 (€500) on 30-40 kg pigs, individually housed. In pairs we covered the belt with an additional elastic belt of 15 cm wide.

We use polar devices for human

polar devise are the best way

Polar is the best way to go. The chest belt is worth trying. I recommend contacting directly Polar, they have the longest experience with measuring ECG recordings.

It would be worth to try microcomputer-based devices (Raspberry Pi and similar ones). What you need is a microcomputer, wifi, and electrodes on a chest belt. It can cost in the order of tens of dollars.

Some colleagues from electronic faculty can put it together. 12 bits wide potential recordings exported into the CSV file will serve as a satisfactory input for any software evaluating ECG recordings.

When you got ECG, you can use complexity measures to follow the complexity of the ECGs. It gives much more data than HRV.

I recommend polar simply because of it has the longest experience with measuring ECG recording devices.

In sheep we are using implantable loggers from star-oddi. It is an icelandic company. They measure temperature, heart rate and activity

In sheep we are using implantable loggers from star-oddi. It is an icelandic company. They measure temperature, heart rate and activity

In sheep we are using implantable loggers from star-oddi. It is an icelandic company. They measure temperature, heart rate and activity

In sheep we are using implantable loggers from star-oddi. It is an icelandic company. They measure temperature, heart rate and activity

In sheep we are using implantable loggers from star-oddi. It is an icelandic company. They measure temperature, heart rate and activity

Jose Alfonso Abecia Which of the logger available from start-oddi do you use? What's the aprox cost and where do you implant it?

Thank you

We use in sheep the DST milli-HRT ACT

Implantable Heart Rate, Activity and Temperature Logger. Unfortunately they are quite expensive. You need tomask for a quote to the company. They are implanted in the armpit.

You can have a look at out paper “Using subcutaneous bio-loggers to monitor circadian rhythmicity of temperature, heart rate and activity in sheep under intensive housing conditions” in bio rthym res