First aid for dogs is not about treating anything yourself. It is about keeping the animal alive and stable for the twenty minutes it takes to reach professional help, and about recognising which situations cannot wait until the morning.
Do the preparation on a calm evening. Nobody researches an emergency service while carrying a collapsed dog down three flights of stairs.
Prepare this week
- Save your practice's number, and find out how out-of-hours cover works: many vets operate a rota, and you need to know how to reach the one on duty on a Sunday night
- Write the address of the nearest emergency clinic into your phone as a destination, so you are not searching maps at two in the morning
- Keep your dog's chip number, vaccination record, medication list and insurance details in one photograph on your phone
- Decide in advance who can authorise treatment if you are abroad, and put it in writing for whoever looks after your dog
- Know your dog's normal: resting breathing rate, what its gums look like, how it moves. You cannot recognise abnormal without it
Call before you drive. A practice told what is coming prepares oxygen, fluids or a table, and may tell you to do something specific on the way.
The six that cannot wait
Breathing difficulty
Open-mouth breathing in a resting dog, a stretched-out neck, blue or grey gums, noisy effort. Keep the dog cool and calm, carry rather than walk it, and go immediately. Flat-faced breeds deteriorate faster than owners expect.
Heatstroke
Frantic panting, drooling, bright red gums, vomiting, wobbling, collapse. Move to shade, pour cool, not iced, water over the body, particularly the neck, chest, belly and inner legs, use a fan on wet fur, and travel with the windows open or the air conditioning on. Do not use ice baths, and do not wait to see whether the dog improves.
Bloat and gastric torsion
A hard, swollen abdomen, unproductive retching, restlessness, drooling and rapid deterioration, most often in deep-chested breeds. This is surgical and the clock is measured in hours. Go now, and call on the way.
Poisoning
Take the packet with you. Do not make the dog vomit unless a vet tells you to, because with some substances that causes more damage on the way back up. The common culprits in a household are chocolate, xylitol in sugar-free products, grapes and raisins, onion and garlic, human medication, rat poison and antifreeze, which is sweet, attractive and lethal in tiny quantities.
Serious bleeding
Press firmly on the wound with a clean cloth and keep pressing rather than lifting to look. If blood soaks through, add another layer on top. Elevate the limb if you can. Tourniquets do more harm than good in untrained hands.
Seizures
Do not restrain the dog and do not put anything in its mouth. Move furniture away, dim the lights, note the time and film it if you can, since the video is genuinely useful to the vet. A single short seizure needs an appointment. A seizure lasting more than a few minutes, or repeated seizures, is an emergency now.
Common non-emergencies, handled properly
Cut pad. Rinse with clean water, apply pressure, cover with a clean dressing and a sock taped above the joint rather than tightly around the foot. Pads bleed impressively. Deep cuts, glass, or anything still in the wound need a vet.
Limping. Rest, no stairs, no running. If the dog is non-weight-bearing, if there is obvious swelling, or if it has not improved within a day or two, book an appointment rather than waiting a week.
Vomiting or diarrhoea once. Withhold food for a few hours, then small bland meals, and keep water available. See a vet if there is blood, if it continues beyond a day, if the dog is a puppy or elderly, or if the dog is lethargic. Vomiting plus a hard swollen abdomen is not an upset stomach: see above.
Something in the ear or eye. Do not dig. Eyes especially: any squinting, rubbing or cloudiness is a same-day appointment, because eyes deteriorate fast.
Insect sting. Watch the face and mouth. Swelling around the muzzle, hives, or any breathing change means go now.
Muzzles, and why they are kind
A dog in severe pain may bite, and the person nearest is usually the owner. If you have to move an injured dog, improvise a muzzle with a bandage or a lead unless the dog is vomiting, struggling to breathe or has a mouth injury, in which case do not.
Better still, teach your dog to accept a basket muzzle calmly while it is well, in five-minute sessions with food. It takes a fortnight and it makes vet visits, injuries and emergencies far less traumatic for everybody.
What to keep in the bag
- Sterile gauze, self-adhesive bandage, a roll of tape and blunt-ended scissors
- A tick hook, which is used more often than everything else combined
- Saline sachets for flushing eyes and wounds
- Disposable gloves and a foil blanket
- A spare lead and a slip lead, useful for your dog and for someone else's
- A copy of the vaccination record and the emergency numbers on paper
Leave a second, smaller kit in the car. Most incidents happen away from home.
The conversation to have with whoever walks your dog
Anyone who takes your dog out should hold a written authorisation to seek treatment, your vet's details, the address of the emergency clinic and the name of a second contact who can decide if you are unreachable. It costs one page at the start of the relationship and it is the difference between treatment beginning at eleven and treatment beginning at half past twelve.
At PAWLY that page is signed at the meet and greet, alongside the key receipt, and the sequence is fixed: the owner first, then the named second contact, then the dog's own practice, or the nearest emergency service if the practice is closed.
General information for dog owners in Luxembourg, not veterinary or legal advice. For your own dog, ask your vet, a qualified behaviourist or your commune. How this journal is written and checked.
Away from your dog all day?
PAWLY provides individual dog walks, home visits and overnight care in your own home, across Luxembourg City. Same walker every time, written report after every visit.
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