The Savvy VetTech

If you work in small animal practice, you are bound to one day find yourself somehow involved in giving a blood transfusion.

While the administration of blood transfusions can vary significantly, depending on whether you’re working in a general practice that doesn’t routinely perform transfusions or a high-volume emergency clinic, there are certain steps that should always remain constant. It’s important to have a grasp of these basic steps in pre-transfusion testing. 

When a dog presents for an acute onset of vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, pancreatitis will likely be near the top of the differential diagnosis list.

The veterinarian will likely recommend a full diagnostic workup, including a CBC, serum biochemistry, abdominal radiographs, an in-house IDEXX SNAP^® cPL and/or a Spec cPL to be submitted to a reference laboratory, and possibly an abdominal ultrasound.

It’s officially summer, which means that many pet owners are traveling with their pets. Unfortunately, pets don’t always share the same enthusiasm for travel as their human companions! Therefore, summer is often associated with an increase in phone calls and veterinary visits for medications to help make travel easier on pets and their owners. 

Here is a nursing word problem for you Vet Techs, soon to be called Vet Nurses on hot to calculate fluid rates for this dog. Read the case, try to calulate it on your own, and then hit the button to view the answer.

“Jackie,” a 4-year old Maltese mix presents to your clinic after ingesting a full milk chocolate bar about 20 minutes ago. This means he consumed about 1.55 ounces according to the package the owner brought.

Every year at this time, I start to think about dog pancreatitis for obvious reasons. Lots of delicious food and soon to be holiday parties taking place.

And as the old saying goes, and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! This is especially true with dog pancreatitis prevention, as this can be a very serious and even life threatening disease for dogs.

Take the time to remind your veterinarian clients about the dangers of various Thanksgiving food for dogs when they come in to the clinic, and potentially even have a handout or e-mail for them as a helpful reminder.

While some dogs may easily tolerate some plain turkey meat, others can become seriously ill. The most common thing that I see in practice is a dog with pancreatitis or gastrointestinal upset because of things the GUESTS give the pets without the owner knowing!

Multiply that across multiple guests and it can make for a bad combination. So besides educating your clients, who may know what their dogs can and cannot tolerate, remind them to tell their guests- politely but firmly- that they must not feed the pets without permission, or better yet not at all. Otherwise...they can pay the vet bills!