First Aid training

[Gulfalan67]

Its always good to stay current in First Aid living or operating in remote and isolated areas.

So this arvo I'm flying down to town to do a First Aid course. But its a course for First Aid for doggos. I mean humans providing First Aid to dogs obviously. Course run by vets.

Never heard of this previously, but the opportunity came up and my wife and I thought it would be good given we live remotely with The Boy.

In addition to general trauma injuries we also have lots of snakes, toads and venomous creepy crawlies and nasty viruses carried by ticks.. Not to mention crocodiles in the creek.

So I'm looking forward to hear what the experts say, and whether they will have a dummy dog on which to practice CPR?

If so, will it be modelled on a poodle, a pug, a dachshund -or a Wolf like ours? All such different shapes...

Will report tomorrow

Cheers

Alan

 

[1 shot willie]

Hi Alan.

Good luck with the course.......what a great idea........ given your remote location there.
Knowing you have a chance to help the boy out if he gets into a spot of bother

Good luck getting a Bandaid on that Croc in the creek though

Look forward to hearing how you get on

 

[saxonaxe]

I look forward to hearing about the course, Alan.

 

[Ystranc]

That course sounds like a brilliant idea. We do all the basic maintenance stuff like ear cleaning and claw clipping. Many years ago I have had to staple/suture up a big cut on Beau when he was still with us.

 

[Gulfalan67]

OK

Back home now.

First Aid Training was nothing earth-shattering but reasonably helpful. I can now do CPR on The Boy, and pop out a tennis ball lodged in his windpipe.

I also know how and where to stitch wounds, set fractures and how to make him vomit if he licks up rat poison.

That last issue made me chuckle to myself. The Boy doesn't eat any old carrion, it has to be fresh , delicious and garnished to his sophisticated palate.

He's been spoiled by my wife's incredible cooking and he loves her blueberry breakfast pancakes...He won't eat cheddar if there's Camembert to be had, and prefers Danish salami to Hungarian in his sandwiches.

Sometimes we try to hide tiny slithers of a tablet rolled into balls of his mince as a way of secretly medicating him. The subterfuge rarely works.. He nibbles the mince away from around the tablet fragment and leaves it on the floor.

I can't speak for other doggos -but I can't imagine The Boy sucking up rat poison like an 80s yuppy on lines of cocaine!

But I can now take his pulse, his temperature and identify illness from his eyes.

But to be honest sounds like Mike has done much more advanced treatments than we were taught.

Oh yeah. One more thing. Give your pooch paracetomol - never ibuprofen!

Cheers

Alan

 

[saxonaxe]

Sounds like a very well worth while course to attend. When I owned dogs I remember feeling a bit helpless if they were unwell, it's reassuring to at least have some knowledge. My Collie Lab cross would eat food with a pill in it and act all innocent, then when he thought I wasn't looking would spit the pill out.

 

[1 shot willie]

We are so lucky with "Eddie".....he takes his Flea and worm tablets with no hassle at all.......straight from the wrapper.
But only because he thinks he maybe missing out on a proper treat.....crafty little begger.
I pretend to be eating it and then offer him some

 

[Ystranc]

We're trialling a product called Nextguard™ Spectra which is a combined flea, tick and multi wormer... I'll let you know if it seems to be effective. As Alan says"paracetamol not ibuprofen" but we also use products called Loxicom™ and Metacam™ as anti-inflammatories or pain killers for our dogs.
Being a small holding we are also expected to be able to inject both intra muscular and sub cutaneous injections for livestock, not that it is ever easy...our animals rarely co-operate.

 

[Gulfalan67]

We're trialling a product called Nextguard™ Spectra which is a combined flea, tick and multi wormer... I'll let you know if it seems to be effective. As Alan says"paracetamol not ibuprofen" but we also use products called Loxicom™ and Metacam™ as anti-inflammatories or pain killers for our dogs.
Being a small holding we are also expected to be able to inject both intra muscular and sub cutaneous injections for livestock, not that it is ever easy...our animals rarely co-operate.

Too right Mike.

In a former life I used to work with vets running thousands of animals through runs vaccinating with up to six different vaccines (juggling multiple vaccine guns!) Most we ever did was 7000 head in a day... about 35000 vaccines... There was four or five of us I recall and we had a good system.

I remember one occaision we had put a mob through the run and there was just one sheep left unaccounted for on the inside of the run. One of our team strolled over, grabbed it by the neck and thrust a needle in. It dropped dead at his feet! The owner was standing nearby, but we all burst out laughing...We were so exhausted from working sunup to sunset in the blazing desert, and that poor sheep just triggered us...

Alan