COLUMBUS, Ohio — We have all heard by now how CPR is critical to saving someone's life. But what do you do if your dog or cat is in a medical crisis?
“It’s one of those things you don’t need it till you need it,” says Dr. Dillon Clouse, a veterinarian at Animal Care Center at Cherry Way. “We all hope that we never have to use CPR on an animal.”
Two weeks ago, Courtney Walker nearly lost one of her two dogs, Oakley, had she not started CPR.
“Oakley was pinned to the ground, unfortunately, just being strangled, unknowingly by Bentley,” she says.
The two dogs became entangled when Bentley’s tooth somehow got stuck in Oakley’s collar and twisted the collar as he tried to free himself.
“I tried to get my fingers underneath of the collar, but it was truly so tight, I couldn't get a single finger underneath,” Walker says.
Her son Maverick grabbed a pair of scissors, but Walker says there was no room to slide the scissors under the collar.
“I could see Oakley stop breathing,” Walker said with tears. “And then he stopped breathing and his tongue had fallen out of the right side of his mouth and was completely blue by the time I could get the collar off.
Clouse says he believes Oakley had maybe two to three minutes before oxygen stopped flowing. That’s why he suggests pet owners know how to perform CPR on animals.
“If you can get them on their side, that's by far the easiest way,” Clouse said.
He says accidents with dogs getting their necks caught on outdoor chains are not as uncommon as pet owners might think.
“Layering your hands like this, you want to have your arms locked and then just doing chest compressions at 100 beats per minute,” he added.
That's exactly what Walker did… and Oakley started to breathe again.
“This is truly one of those instances where there would have been no time to, you know, load him up and take him somewhere,” she says with heavy relief in her voice. “It was either I could save him at that time or he wouldn't be saved.”
The American Red Cross provides a checklist on how to perform CPR on your pet. You can see the checklist by clicking here.