How to Stabilize a Dog In An Emergency

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. Adrienne Mulligan of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic in Arizona and I'm here today to talk to you about major trauma with your dog and how you could help stabilize them a little bit on your way to the veterinarian. The best thing to have in your car at all times is a extra blanket and a towel. If a dog your dog or some other dog is hit by a car and is clearly still alive but can't get up what you want to do is you want to protect yourself and protect them from them selfs by throwing a blanket over them. Now if it is a small dog a towel might do. You really want something like a large blanket. What you want to do is you approach the dog. You want to put the blanket on them and you could stand on either side of them so if they struggle like that that you got that you got them bundle up against any danger from there selfs. Then you could often pick them up like that in the blanket and carry them to your car and get them to your car so you could take him to the vet. The other thing if you find it on the side of the road or anywhere else would be something like a stretcher. This is a real stretcher but obviously you probably won't have on of these in the car. A board, any kind of a board would do and if you have a dog that you trying to stabilize and so you get the leg onto the board. The thing is when you are trying to move them there are going to want to get up off the board so once they are laying on the board. Down. Down. Down. There you go. Good boy. Good boy. There you go. Good boy. I know this is fun. Then you could cover them with the blanket and you will probably need help with this. Then using the blanket around the board you wrap them against the board but again this is probably a 2-3 person job with a big dog. Using a blanket to attach them to the board will help to secure them to carry them on the board to get to them where you need to go. So the main thing is to use a towel possibly a board to stabilize there body to be able to carry them and get them to the vet asap because there is nothing you could do to animal that is that badly injure at that point and time."