What Can I Do For My Dog At Home During An Emergency?

Hi, I'm Dr. Broussard with the Wagon Train Veterinary Clinic and in today's video segment we're going to discuss certain first aid techniques that you might be able to do for your dog at home in the case of an emergency. So we put together a list of some fairly commonly asked questions and we're going to run through to hopefully give you a better understanding of how to handle an emergency should one occur. Go! Dr. Broussard, how will I know if my dog needs first aid? That's it. It's almost a tricky one to answer because it's it's it's there's so many medical conditions can happen to a dog that it's very difficult boring or impossible to tell you if your dog does this this and this it needs first aid. First aid is just the provide the providing of medical care emergency situation. I kind of say it that way. So I think things like lacerations, blood loss, those kind of things are probably the most obvious and most common things that you as a pet owner at home would see be able to immediately recognize and be able to administer first aid to. Maybe if your dog has a history of seizures and you already have anti-seizure medications then you might argue that giving that animal maybe a higher dose of anti-seizure medications might be administering first aid. You couldn't argue with that. You know that might be something that would be good too but it just depends on what's going on as to what kind of first aid that could be remedied or used and I don't know that one question setting would be the way to answer that. I think if there's at all any question of what's going on or what needs to be done get on the phone and call your veterinarian and he can walk you through what needs to be done a little bit more accurately. How do I know if my dog needs CPR? Well CPR much like in humans is cardiopulmonary resuscitation so that would imply by its very nature that you're having either heart or respiratory issues. So how are you going to know would be a dog that may be just acutely collapsed maybe is really really struggling to breathe or perhaps has stopped breathing maybe it's a dog that's choking things like that. So yeah that's I guess without any going any further detail that's kind of how you would know if your dog would require CPR. How to do CPR on the other hand is a little bit different because it's a different anatomy you know than people and I won't go through all the play-by-plays of it here because it's not really the venue and I don't have anything to practice on or to show you one but simply put CPR is usually chest compressions. The dog's going to be on its side laterally of course and it's chest compressions usually right where the left elbow meets the body because that's about where the heart is. So you want to do light compressions there see this is the part I don't really want to talk about without a proper demonstration but it's light chest compressions they're pretty rapid rate you figure the average dog's heart rate is anywhere between say 80 and 120 even at rest so it's pretty rapid more so than ours would be. The breathing is probably the difficult the not most difficult but different part from humans you know in people we know to pinch the nose kind of hold up the chin and we breathe directly into their mouth that way. In a dog I'll be honest with you you do almost the opposite. In a dog you more or less close the mouth and breathe directly into the nose. You can put your whole mouth over their nose and breathe into their nose that way and I know a lot of people watching this are probably thinking that's kind of nasty. It works and it's a pretty good seal and that's that's usually the most effective way to get it done. How can I find out quickly if my dog has ingested something poisonous? Quickly unless you saw it or know what the dog got into maybe you have poison out at your house or maybe you just changed your your antifreeze yesterday and some spilled in the driveway your car's had a radiator leak for a long time you know you know that something's there and you perhaps saw the dog in that area or you literally saw the dog ingested that's the only way you're going to know immediately because unfortunately guys there is no quick immediate test that when they come in that we can say hey I'm going to run a test for antifreeze. No we can run blood work and we can look what the kidneys are but it takes days for the kidneys to be affected to where it's going to show on blood work anytime so unfortunately there's no immediate test it's just good observation on your part. Who can I contact regarding possible dog poisoning? You know that I know for a fact the ASPCA does have a poison control hotline that you can call obviously you would need to know what the dog ingested you can't just call them with a random question say hey I think my dog no I mean it's a hey my dog just ate decon rat poison or whatever it is and they can tell you exactly what the active ingredient is and what you need to do. Again your veterinarian will have to be part of that that solution in 99.9 percent of the cases but to at least give you some immediate information about how to handle things and what you may or may not experience with that dog or your dog experience that's probably the first step that I would do is ASPCA hotline. How do I determine if I need to bring my dog to a hospital for an emergency? Yeah again probably starting with the call let me talk to your veterinarian talk to the staff there and find out guys with any type of situation like this and this is what makes me nervous by doing videos like this I never ever want to imply that oh this is not a big deal you can handle it yourself when in doubt get your veterinarian involved you know because it's if you assess it one way or your veterinarian you know tells you over the phone oh you probably can do this it's no big deal it's just this and you're wrong it could go badly you know so I've got it all in doubt get on the phone bring a man let the veterinarian assess it and do it that way okay all right guys well that does it for this segment I appreciate you tuning in if you have any more questions that I'm sure that you probably do because this is a very vast topic just reach out to us you can email us call us come on by the office Facebook whatever it takes and I'll be happy to reach out to you if there's anything I can help with okay thanks a lot and we'll talk to you soon.