TABLE 3.

Systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria used to evaluate severity of disease in dogs, adapted from Hauptman et al, ¹⁷ Okano et al, ¹⁹ and Unterer et al. ¹⁰

Clinical SIRS‐criteria
Hypo‐ or hyperthermia (°C)	Small dogs(<15 kg): <37.5 or >39.4
	Large dogs (≥15 kg): <37.5 or >39.3
Tachycardia—heart rate (beats/min)	>140
Tachypnea—respiratory rate (breaths/min)	>40
Laboratory SIRS‐criteria
Leukopenia or leukocytosis (109 cells/L)	<6 or >25
Immature (band) neutrophils (109 cells/L)	>0.3
Hypoglycemia (mg/dL)	<70.2 (<3.9 mmol/L)