“It's like the blood gods meant us to be there that day.”
That’s how Mary Robinson described the wonderful coincidence that occurred at the Tudor Glen Veterinary Hospital last Saturday. The local animal hospital was hosting a blood donor clinic for dogs when one of its other clients had an immediate need for it.
Citing privacy concerns regarding the dog that required the blood transfusion, Vivien Bailey-Marriott, the management assistant at the hospital, did say that the animal was in that morning for emergency surgery.
“I personally don’t know where the blood would have come from if we didn’t have some on site. We did take a unit of the blood that had just been given that morning.”
Robinson is the national laboratory co-ordinator and a registered veterinary technologist with the Canadian Animal Blood Bank, an organization that has been in existence for 20 years. She travels around the country to help out with these donor clinics and encourage other people to sign up their dogs to become future donors.
The blood gets collected and tested and then shipped back to Winnipeg for central storage. It doesn’t get stored at the veterinarians’ and there are no regional blood banks across this country like there are for people. Usually, a hospital needs to arrange a few days in advance for a unit of blood to be shipped back.
Sometimes, a dog needs a blood transfusion faster than that. Sometimes, those blood gods step in to make sure that happens.
“They’re there for us sometimes. We couldn’t do this without them,” Robinson said.
Before Bailey-Marriott started working at the vet’s office earlier this year, she didn’t realize that dogs could even give blood to each other. To her, there could be no more impressive way of demonstrating the process and realizing its importance than by witnessing what happened on the weekend.
“People don’t think about it. It makes absolute sense. There’s dogs in surgery most days here,” she said. “It was an eye-opener for me. To actually see it happen… it’s pretty amazing.”
“The blood was needed and we had it. People don’t realize and I didn’t know before I started working here that dogs can donate blood.”
In order to be a blood donor, a dog must be healthy, weigh at least 50 pounds, be between one and eight years old, and have not been vaccinated within the last four weeks.
There are only negative and positive blood types for dogs and each unit of blood is approximately the same volume – a pint – as what an adult person would give.
The procedure takes half an hour but each applicant needs to sign up and start the process earlier than on the day of the drive as there are forms and tests.
A dog can only give again after three months, so the next blood drive will take place in November. The Tudor Glen Veterinary Hospital is the host for these events in St. Albert while others are held at NAIT and other venues in Edmonton.
Call 780-458-6051 or visit its website at www.tudorglenvethospital.ca for more information. People can also learn about the Canadian Animal Blood Bank by visiting www.canadiananimalbloodbank.ca.
