MERIDIAN, Idaho — When I first heard about the stabbing of two K-9’s in Wednesday’s police shooting, I wanted to know how do emergency animal hospitals prepare themselves for those kind of patients.
“If it’s a trauma and they're bleeding from that trauma, those guys can do pretty well, but if it’s a dog that has a chronic bleeding condition, so your own body is causing the bleeding, those can be a little bit more tricky, maybe need multiple transfusions. It depends on what the cause is,” said Dr. Laura Pell.
Dr. Laura Pell, an emergency veterinarian at WestVet in Meridian, said getting blood for transfusions is similar to what we deal with. There is a donation center where they actually purchase the blood product.
“At different times if we can’t get blood, sometimes we will open up blood banks ourselves, and often times it’s our own dogs that donate," explained Pell.
And according to Dr. Pell, transfusions from one dog to another: a fairly simple procedure.
“For our first transfusion there’s a universal donor that most dogs are, so typically they can all get the same blood at least for the first transfusion,” said Pell.
As a dog owner myself, if that’s something that might interest you and you’d like to help them out, ask your local veterinarian.
