If something catastrophic such as a fire happens to a family, the Tioga Volunteer Fire Department wants to try to help keep the loss of a pet from adding to that pain.
That’s why the TVFD invited the Denton County Animal ER out on April 21 for specialized training about animal basic life support care and CPR.
“For about two years, we’ve been searching for somebody to come in [to do the training],” Chief Rick Hartman said. “… With everybody having pets, and pets being more and more family members—now more than ever—we wanted to be able to find a way, if we have an opportunity to help, to try to help.”
The staff of the Denton County Animal ER provided a roughly three-hour training to help the firefi ghters understand how to handle treatment for a “four-legged family member” in the case of a catastrophic event.
“What we learned is that dogs and cats and other four-legged family members, they can’t—their eyes don’t tear up or moisturize as quickly as humans’ do,” he said. “So, any type of smoke or irritant to the eye can actually dry out the eye and cause it to go blind later on.”
Something to counteract that is part of the animal BLS kits the ER helped the department assemble.
The ER also provided a special kit for the K9 Joga and her handler Officer Kevin Whitley in case she has an emergency.
“We actually built a kit for our canine officer to have that carries an oxygen mask for his dog along with a little O2 tank and a bulb syringe for suction and some drops, moisturizing drops, in case anything happens to our canine officer … so he can start care,” Hartman said.
The ER staff also informed the firefighters and Whitley that Texas “canine officers are allowed to be transported by ambulance” to an emergency vet because of the job the dogs perform.
“Allegiance EMS has confirmed that if anything happens to our canine officer that they would transport the canine officer to the most appropriate emergency vet,” Hartman said.
The training on April 21 focused on how to revive animals affected by smoke inhalation from a house fire or catastrophic storm damage, when the department would be called out for a human emergency.
Firefighters worked on a “simulated canine,” Hartman said.
He said he found it “eyeopening how close everything that transfers from human CPR to animals.”
“It’s very, very close to the same,” Hartman said of working on resuscitating mammals. “A little bit different anatomy, but the basics are pretty much the same, and that was really surprising.”
The volunteer firefighters even had the chance to learn CPR procedures for some reptilian friends— turtles and snakes—as well. The Denton County Animal ER staff provided equipment, including topload transport cages and taught them “how to build our own little oxygen therapy chamber for the animal,” Hartman said.
“It’s just a fantastic addon to the services that we can provide to our citizens in the event of a fire,” Hartman said.
