When Every Minute Counts: How Your Pet Could Be a Hero

🚨 Did you know there’s NO national blood bank for pets? When a dog or cat needs a life-saving transfusion, it’s down to local donor animals—often the pets of clinic staff or friends—to save the day!

1️⃣ The most common reason pets need transfusions is rat bait poisoning, stopping blood from clotting and causing deadly internal bleeding.

2️⃣ Severe anemia from immune disease or parasites is another top cause requiring urgent intervention.

3️⃣ Trauma from accidents or fights can lead to catastrophic blood loss, making rapid transfusions essential.

4️⃣ Most vet clinics rely on a “call list” of animal donors—meaning if you have a healthy, calm dog between 1-8 years old and over 25kg, your pet could literally save lives!

5️⃣ Unlike humans, dogs can safely receive a single unmatched transfusion, while cats need a perfect blood type match—making donations even more precious.

💡 The biggest takeaway? Every donor counts. In an emergency, having pet blood available can mean the difference between life and death. Talking to your local clinic about joining their donor list might be the most important thing you ever do for a pet in need.

💭 Would you consider having your dog or cat become a blood donor?

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Transcript

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Free audio Post production by aufonic.com I was sitting in a lounger with my legs up, watching blood flow from my vein into a bag that was swirling on some contraption below me. Obviously, here I was donating blood and it was the first time for a while. And it got me thinking that actually it's something that we really take for granted in the human system. If we need blood because we've been in an accident, we've had a surgery for any number of reasons, it seemingly they're on hand, on tap, and how different that can be for our pets. And when our dogs or cats need a transfusion, there's no national blood bank to call on and instead the situation is very different. But you and your pet, while they may never need a blood product, they can actually be lifesavers. Welcome to the Call the Vet show, the podcast that helps pet parents understand and optimize the health of their furry family so they can live the full and happy life you want want for them. And here's your host, veterinarian Dr. Alex Avery. Hello Kia Ora, and welcome back to another episode of the show. It's great to be joining you again this week and today we're talking about emergency situations and one real emergency situation is when we need blood products. I've been working as a vet since 2006 and I've always worked in clinics where we have carried out our own after hours service. So we haven't relied on external clinics. You know, we've been working in the day and if we were on call, then we were on call all night and then we would work the following day or weekends. We work, you know, from Friday morning all the way through to Monday evening when we get to go home and not have to worry about whether the phone's going to go off. So I've done a lot of emergency work in my time in practice, and one situation that can be very stressful for everybody because of the potential serious and urgent nature of the conditions that we're dealing with, but also with the potential lack of availability of these products is when we need to give a transfusion. So definitely there are some emergency clinics out there. It's going to depend on where you are in the world and if you're in a major center where they are seeing emergencies all the time at a really high rate. Some of those clinics, they may well have blood products on hand, so they might have something like plasma, they might have whole blood products, whatever it is. Most veterinary practices across the world, however, I would say rely entirely on local donor animals being available when needed. So having a list of animals that we can call upon any time of day or night to draw blood and immediately give it to a patient in need. Now, very often this does end up being staff members, pets or pets belonging to a friend or a family member of the. Of the owner of the animal who needs that product. But that's obviously not always available. And the problem is that if no suitable donor can be found, then vital treatment can be delayed. Something that no vet or owner wants to have to face. So what if every clinic had a reliable network of, of donor pets that were ready to help in emergencies? In a way, it's very similar like human blood donors do. So with the human blood service, obviously, we can go and we can give blood and then that can be stored, it can be separated out into whatever products are needed. So, you know, kind of plasma, serum, whole blood products, platelets, red blood cells, whatever it is. I mean, I'm sure there's lots of different products that I'm not really aware of. And so today I want to share the most common reasons why actually we might need blood transfusions in our dogs and cats. What makes an ideal blood donor? And all of this is so that you can better understand this vital part of emergency care and how all pet owners can play a part. And now on with the show. So let's start with some of the most common reasons that blood transfusions are needed in our pets. And for me, and this might differ where you are in the world again, but for me, the number one reason has got to be rat bait toxicity. So the way rat bait works is by stopping the body's ability to clot for the blood to clot. And so effectively, what happens is all the normal little bleeds that take place kind of just from day to day livings, every time you're breathing and you're moving, little capillaries are breaking, but your body deals with that, no problems at all. But what happens is the body loses its ability to clot. And so effectively we get severe internal bleeding. Now, the most common place this happens in my experience, is in the lungs. But it can be in the gut, in the abdomen, can be in joints, it can be anywhere in the body, really. And an animal effectively slowly bleeds to death. If we catch this early, if we know an animal has eaten a rodenticide, we can make them vomit if it's within a few hours. We can also blood 72, about 72 hours later to see if they've eaten Enough to be toxic because it takes that period of time before any toxicity occurs. But if we're getting to a stage where we're picking up really late and we're getting those, those clinical signs, so that signs of sign of bleeding, anemia, coughing up blood, whatever it is, then very often while we're waiting for the, the vitamin K, which is the antidote to start working, that counteracts the rat baits and allows the blood to clot again. While we're waiting for that, we actually need to provide clotting factors. We need to provide blood cells potentially. But yeah, those clotting factors. And that time is really crucial because without that, this is a fatal condition. So this is the number one reason that we will have to give a blood transfusion. The next one is probably severe anemia, which is often due to something called imha. So that's an immune mediated hemolytic anemia. That's a condition actually that my cat Molly has just, well, hopefully is in the process of recovering from. It really was very touch and go. I'm going to have another episode where I talk about some of the decision making that I had to make around Molly and how that can help you when it comes to making difficult decisions for your pets. But anyway, by the by, this condition is where the body's own immune system destroys the red blood cells faster than the body can replace them. And transfusions, again, they help by restoring that oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. But they really are a case of buying time for other treatments to stop that ongoing destruction. So you'll see a commonality here with the rat bait toxicity. It's really a case of just buying time for other treatments to start working. And then the number three reason that I see is going to be because of trauma. So accidents, fall, fights, anything like that, that can cause sudden and potentially catastrophic blood loss. And in cases of this severe blood loss, which is thankfully uncommon, a transfusion is often the fastest way to stabilize a pet and to prevent further complications while those other injuries are being addressed. So again, it's a case of kind of buying time to allow other treatments to take effect, potentially stabilizing for surgery, for anesthesia, for example. And then there's numerous other causes. So that could be intestinal parasites that are causing really severe blood loss. It could be blood parasites that are also causing this destruction of the red blood cells. Could be various tumours, various cancers that cause sudden bleeding. So something like a hemangiosarcoma, a big tumour that is typically on the spleen that suddenly ruptures and you get potentially catastrophic haemorrhage. So there's a huge number of reasons potentially why we need to give blood transfusions to our pets. In my experience, again, dogs are definitely by far and away the most common patient. But cats, you know, can need transfusions too. So I'm going to then switch tacks. So what makes an ideal blood donor? Really? I'm focusing on dogs here for the reason being that dogs are the most common recipients and need, they have the highest need of blood, blood products, blood transfusions, and we'll talk a little bit about cats in a minute. But for your dog to be a blood donor, they must, must meet certain criteria so that it is healthy for them to donate blood, that there's going to be no harm that comes their way, but also so that those blood products aren't going to potentially cause harm and concern to the donor animal as well. But you know, their welfare is always our priority. So only dogs that are healthy and well suited can become life saving blood donors. So in general, the ideal dog donor, they should be fit and healthy, you know, no concerns. They should be between one and eight years of age, so they've reached adulthood and they're not yet into their older years. They should weigh more than 25 kilos. So that allows them to donate a unit of blood in the same way that we would give a unit of blood, donating that volume very safely without causing concern. That is also a very helpful volume of blood to be able to give to another animal. If we were, if we were taking less blood, then the benefits of that are going to be much less. They need to have a calm and cooperative temperament. That kind of, I guess, goes without saying. And it might be that they do get sedated somewhat to donate blood, but we don't want them to be super stressed when they come into the clinic. We don't want to have to, you know, to worry about their mental state because that's going to make the whole situation so much more difficult. Ideally, we want them to be vaccinated or at least have had an annual tita test after that first year booster. That vaccination requirement is going to vary depending on where you are in the world and what diseases there are that we are protecting through vaccination. And we don't want them to be on any medication as well because medication is going to be carried in that blood and that could have the potential for side effects, it could cause interactions, it could cause complications with the donor animal. Once it's on board there, depending again on what we're treating and what their state is like, like I say, there may be other local requirements, there may be travel restrictions, there might be parasite control measures that need to have been taken and that's, you know, going to depend on your clinic and they would definitely be able to advise you of that. And while it might sound scary, you might understandably be worried about the risk to your dog. Like I say, they really are the, the priority to maintain their health, to maintain their safety. And the process will generally look like we will give, you know, if we do have a list of potential donors, we'll give people a call. You know, there will be some recognition of when is an appropriate time to call that, to call you as their, their owner. So it might be that, you know, you're very happy to be woken up any time of day or night, or it might be that only between certain hours did you want to be contacted. But we would get in touch with that owner. We would ascertain whether you were able to bring your dog in to donate blood. We would then admit them. Depending on their temperament, it's likely that they'll be given a light sedative, maybe some local anesthetic. It's really going to depend on them. They'll be with us for, you know, maybe half an hour, an hour donating the blood. If they've had a sedative, then it might be that they're with us for another couple of hours just while they recover from that, while we monitor them and make sure that there is no problems, no problems there. And then really there's no, no kind of follow up needed. Keeping them quiet for a few days, making sure they're well fed and watered. It's not something where we, and I don't know if this is the case across the world, but certainly I believe it's in the UK and certainly here where I am in New Zealand, or we do not pay our blood donors. So it's not a money making scheme. There's definitely ethical considerations for why that's in place and I think that is a very good reason. In the clinics I've worked at, we've often given a bag of food or something like that as a thank you, maybe a wee certificate, you know, something to celebrate that because it's really such a vital service that's being offered. But you certainly wouldn't expect to be paid to have your blood, your dog donate their blood. And then one common concern or question at least is about blood Type considerations, we know if you've ever donated blood or you've received blood, probably if you've watched any movies as well, is that with people that blood matching is really important. Now dogs, they do absolutely have blood types, but thankfully in most cases dogs can safely receive a transfusion of a non matched blood type. So they can receive any kind of blood once in their life without complications. So that makes them really very flexible recipients in emergency situations. Because in the vast majority of cases, most dogs, if they're unlucky, they're only ever going to need one blood transfusion in their life. Now if they need more than that because of an underlying condition, then that's where things can definitely get a little bit more complicated with donor, donor kind of cross matching and all that kind of thing. But thankfully it is generally relatively straightforward. Now cats on the other hand is a very, very different situation. They are much more sensitive and they must receive an exact blood type match to avoid serious reactions. And in rare cases where matched donor isn't available to kind of counteract that extreme reaction that could happen from receiving the wrong blood type from another cat, you can actually give a single donation from a dog. So that's a practice known as xenotransfusion and that absolutely can be used and be used very successfully. It's generally something that's only reserved for critical emergencies. But that can definitely be a great way to give our cats blood products in the thankfully unlikely event that they need them. Because remember I said that cats tend not to, I guess, suffer from the problems that or the diseases that dogs do, to require a blood transfusion, helping. Your pet live the happy, healthy life they deserve. So after hearing all this, what's the next step? Well, I hope you will appreciate just how important having blood donors available is for your local clinic or if you live in an area where the emergency centre does have a good supply of blood products and they're not going to need to call on dogs or cats in the middle of the night because they've got these on hand, they get those blood products from somewhere. And there are often schemes available that you know, where dogs and cats can donate blood in the normal day at a routine appointment. So, you know, if that's you, that's definitely something that you can pursue there. But if not, and that's going to be the majority of people out there and affect the majority of practices, just talk to your local clinic. Do they need more blood donors? Do they have enough at the moment? But it's, you know, potentially put you down on the list to call if really the well runs dry, so to speak. It really, I cannot, I cannot emphasize how important it can be to have blood products when needed and also the, the, the sense of stress that can come from being in the situation where you know me as a clinician knowing that I need blood products. But I'm really struggling to get hold of some because either our list is outdated or people just aren't answering their phone or our normal, normal clients are away on holiday, whatever it is, and we can't get hold of those, those products. It really does add to the stress of an already quite difficult if we're, if we are dealing with a life saving situation like that. So, you know, have a chat with your local vet clinic and see if you can get involved because every donation really does count. I'll leave some more links and resources over in the show notes. You can Access those@callthevet.org As always, you can check out all of the back catalog and past episodes over there, as well as in whatever podcast playing app that you're listening to this in now. I'd love for you to hit that Follow or Subscribe button on that app so you don't miss out on any of my future episodes. I've got one coming up all about how to go about making really difficult decisions about the treatment for your pet. It's based on obviously my experience as a vet, but also being in that situation very recently with my cat Molly. So hopefully I will see you, talk to you in that episode in the very near future. But until then, I'm veterinarian Dr. Alex. This is the Call the Vet show because they're family. That's it for this episode of the Call the Vet Show. Be sure to visit callthevet.org to join the conversation, access the show notes and discover our fantastic bonus content. We'll see you next time. Free Audio post production by alphonic.com.