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3 Important Things You Need to Know About Emergency Vet Care
1. Not every situation is an emergency
Most fur parents, especially the new ones, panic easily every time their pet is feeling a little blue or less playful than their usual self. They always assume that their furry friends are seriously sick.
While it’s understandable, if you’re a new fur parent, you must also understand that not everything is an emergency.
When your pet is feeling a little down, there’s a good chance that it’s the mood swings kicking in. You don’t have to make an emergency call to your vet in the middle of the night for a consultation.
The same goes with lumps that you can feel on your pet’s body. While it’s right that you have to consult a vet about the lump, you don’t have to call a pet ambulance right away.
The best thing that you can do is to calm down, check on your pet regularly, and then go to the vet during consultation hours.
2. Emergencies that need urgent vet care
According to vets and animal care professionals, you should call your vet or bring your pet to an animal emergency clinic when these things happen:
- Injuries because of an accident
- Injuries caused by an attack by other animals
- Unconsciousness
- Seizures
- If you see blood in their poop
- Difficulty in urinating or defecating
- Pain in the abdomen
- Non-stop vomiting
- Poisoning
- Choking
- Eye inflammation
- Blindness
Once these emergencies happen, call your vet or bring your pet immediately to urgent care get the help your pet needs.
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3. First aid
During emergencies, a pet ambulance can’t always get to your house or the place of accident instantly to attend to your pet.
That’s why as a pet owner, you must also know what to do while help is on the way. Below are only some of the basic first aid that you can do in certain situations.
Choking
When your pet is choking, you’ll know it right away. Your pet will likely produce loud choking sounds or cough a lot. Other obvious signs are non-stop pawing of the mouth and a change in the color of the lips and tongue.
The first thing that you should do is to calm down. This way, you can properly explain to your vet what happened. He or she will then explain to you the step-by-step process of removing the object while help is on the way.
You can open your pet’s mouth to see whether the choking hazard is visible. If yes, you can try to retrieve the object using a pair of tweezers. But if not, don’t try at all.
If there’s no vet ambulance available, bring your pet to the nearest vet immediately.
Bleeding
If your pet was involved in an accident or got into a fight with another animal and got hurt badly, the first thing to do is to call for a pet ambulance.
And while waiting, the next thing that you should do is to muzzle your pet to prevent aggressive biting because applying first aid will hurt.
Once your pet is muzzled, lightly press a gauze pad or a clean cloth over the wound for three minutes. Repeat this process until the bleeding stops.
If the wound still bleeds continuously, wrap a bandage to put pressure over the wound. Then bring your pet to the nearest vet, if an ambulance is not available.
Fractures
Much like the two emergencies above, the first thing to do is to call your emergency vet. Inform your pet doctor about what happened and wait for the ambulance.
While waiting, muzzle your pet to prevent you or anyone helping from getting bitten. Then find a stretcher or use a makeshift one.
Slowly lay your pet onto the platform and gently wrap your pet onto the stretcher with elastic bands to limit its movements.
Seizures
Unlike in the first situation, restraining your pet is the last thing you want to do during a seizure.
If your pet is having seizures, what you can do is to make sure the general space of your pet is as spacious as possible. You can remove anything that you think can injure your pet while it's having a seizure.
Also, remember to compose yourself and don’t panic. Seizures usually last up to three minutes only. Once it stops, keep your pet relaxed by putting it in a quiet and warm room.
But if the seizures don’t stop after three minutes, that’s when you should call your emergency vet and ask for instructions.
