Pet Injuries

An animal that has suffered an injury that requires treatment is likely to be pretty distressed. If the injury is a small one, treat it yourself. If it is severe, or if you are not sure what to do, take the patient to the vet as soon as you can after taking emergency precautions. You might find that due to the pain and fear an injured animal is difficult to catch. Do not rush about; you will only panic the animal further and could exacerbate the injury. Stop for a moment and think. The animal should be caught as quickly and efficiently as possible to minimize the trauma, and often the easiest way to do this is to persuade it to enter a confined space where it can be more readily caught. Mind you do not get bitten and remember, if the animal is a cat, that not only has it got sharp teeth, it has sharp claws as well. Often, the best thing to do is to wrap the animal in something like a towel to immobilize it and hold it still, and talk to it calmly until it can be treated. What you say might not help the animal too much but it will help you to stay calm and think clearly, and that is important to your pet. If the patient is a dog and it is snapping at you make a muzzle from length of bandage, provided that the dog is not a short nosed breed or has injuries that affect respiration.

Once you become known in your community as being good with animals, pet owners are going to come to you in emergencies.If they tell you that you have no need to worry as Fido never bites,or Tabby has never hurt anyone, do not believe them however convincing they may sound. Mammals, from hamsters to horses, sometimes end up with wound of some kind. When this happens, call a vet if it is serious or you are not sure what to do about it However, if it is only a small injury, clean the wound well with a tepid disinfectant solution, while keeping all parts of your own anatomy away from the biting, scratching, kicking and butting bits of your patient, and then treat the wound with either an antiseptic ointment or wound dressing powder.

If the animal is one of those rare creatures that do not worry about bandages and other dressings, put one on to keep flies and other bad dies away from the injury until it begins to heal. Keep the animal warm and quiet and, when you have done that, check its cage or paddock or stable or wherever it lives for the source of the injury and remove it.

Many animals will not tolerate bandages or other dressings and,if these are needed, they should be left to the vet as he will know the best way to make sure that they are as pet proof as possible,though it must be said that some animals will accept them far better than others. This advice - going to the vet - cannot be bettered for mammals, but as you become more experienced it is possible to do a good job yourself on small birds.

The commonest injuries to small birds are broken limbs. If the limb is a wing and the skin is not torn and there is little or no bleeding beneath the skin, or swelling, the best thing to do is to match the ends of the bones as well as you can and tape the wing to the body so that it cannot be moved. Then keep the bird warm and quiet for a couple of weeks before you remove the dressing. If you are very lucky the wing might have healed, but very often there has been more bleed-in and swelling and the whole thing is worse. This is so frequently the case that with an injury as it is often easier to do nothing except to isolate the patient, and again keep him warm and quiet. In this case the wing will often heal but rarely is the bird able to fly again. If there is an open wound at the site of the fracture, the chances of mending the whole business successfully are minimal and the best thing might be to take the bird to your vet and ask him to amputate the wing. A broken leg presents much the same sort of difficulties if the injury is above the tibia joint, but if it is below that, repairing it is a lot easier.

You need to apply a splint and the two easiest ways of doing this are either to wrap some bandage around the leg and then smear ago od thick layer of melted candle was all over it: the wax will set to form a splint. Or, alternatively, again wrap bandage around the limb and then slide over it a length of plastic drinking straw that has been split along one side. Sellout this closed. After two or three weeks, carefully remove the splint and all should be well .A general tip that works wonders for birds is to raise the temperature in a hospital cage to 32°C (90°F) and put the bird into it. Very often this alone will bring about a recovery. When the bird is better, reduce the temperature a little each day until it is back to normal, and then return your bird to its cage or aviary.But, whatever you do, do not take it straight from 32°C (90°F) and put it into room temperature. One can buy hospital cages but the yare fairly expensive. Nevertheless if you can afford one it will bethel most useful piece of equipment you buy. If you cannot afford to buy one, it is perfectly possible to make this vital component of successful first aid.

The size will depend on what birds you keep, but for the usual small seed eaters, such as the Zebra Finch, a cage about 40 cm (16 in) high X 30 cm (12 in) X30 cm (12 in) is about right. It is best made of thick plywood. There should be a false floor or perforated zinc about 10 cm (4 in) from the bottom, and beneath this are situated two or more ordinary electric light bulbs, or, if you can find them, carbon filament lamps, that act as the heat source. These need to be connected to a thermostat to raise the temperature in the chamber above. Make sure the heat from the lamps does not cause the wood to scorch.

This compartment should have a solid front suitably equipped with switches and controls;you need to be able to raise the temperature in the cage to about32°C (90°F). The compartment for the birds should be fitted with channels at the front so that you can slide in a weld mesh cage front, and outside that a sheet of glass. The glass keeps the heating, but the mesh is also necessary as birds will often keep flying at glass and hurt themselves. This compartment should have an adjustable ventilation panel and a door in the right hand wall, if you are right handed, hinged at the top. A thermometer that is easy to read should be situated in the centre of the back wall, and suitable provision made for food and drink pots, remembering that the water must not spill as there is electrical apparatus beneath. Perches must be fitted, and finally a piece of thick felt or something similar must be laid to cover the floor or the bird may bur nits feet on the metal. Burn the felt after each patient and replace it with a new piece. Fit a handle to the centre of the roof, as hospital cages are surprisingly heavy, and being bulky are difficult to carry especially if you need to open doors on the way. You can add refinements to a hospital cage, such as insulation to cut down on the energy consumption, but whatever is wrong with your pet, and whatever kind of pet it is, the essential is to give the animal warmth, and peace and quiet.

You might find, or someone might bring you, a racing pigeon that has landed, exhausted and perhaps lost. Often, all that is necessary is to provide rest and food for a day or two until it is fit enough to resume its journey. You will know that the pigeon belongs to someone if it has a metal ring on one leg. If the bird was actually on a race when you found it there will be an elastic ring on the other leg. This ring is put on at the start of the race and removed again when it returns home, but the metal ring stays where it is throughout the pigeon's life. There ought also to be an umber stamped on the underside of one wing. The governing body of the world of racing pigeons is the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, and if you do find one of these birds you should inform them. If the bird dies, return its ring to the Association but if you manage to save it tell them and quote the numbers on the rings. They will repay you any expenses incurred in feeding and returning the bird, and not only will the owner be pleased to have his pig-en back but this sort of information also helps the records that the Association maintains.

Injuries to reptiles and amphibians are rare and are usually of one of two sorts. The first is damage caused by one animal to another, such as a bite suffered by fighting. The second is a skinned nose which happens when an animal persists in trying to get through a piece of glass which it cannot see. It keeps knocking its face against the glass until the nose becomes bloody.

The best thing to do in both cases is clean up the damage and leave the animal strictly alone, after removing the cause of the injury .Reptiles and amphibians can recover from horrendous physical injury and trying to treat them generally increases the problems .Remove aggressive animals from the tank and paint the inside of the glass with white emulsion and let it dry and you ought to find that all is well thereafter. The only objection to painting the glass is that you can no longer see your animals, and one of the reasons you bought them is so that you could enjoy watching them. There is an answer to that but it does not work every time by any means.This removes very thin strips of paint. Week later do the same thing in between the first lot thereby increasing the bars of transparency. A week after drawing horizontal bars and keep on repeating these steps until eventually all the paint is removed. Sometimes the animals become so used to the front wall that they do not notice that it is slowly disappear.ing and they do not thereafter try and get through it. But they are not very intelligent beasts and the only real answer might be to put them in an enormous enclosure with all the branches and other cage furniture well away from the glass and an opaque panel where the glass meets the floor. Skinned noses on reptiles and amphibians take forever to heal, especially when the atmosphere is very humid, so you have to pay particular attention to hygiene at this time.

If one animal has suffered a bite from another, think very carefully about the community in that tank, as most reptiles and amphibians regard any moving object of suitable size as edible,and the first bite may be a sign that one animal is growing faster than you had realized. A pair of sibling monitor lizards that started life at the same size at the same time. They lived happily in the same tank. The person who owned them saw them every day and the fact that one was growing far faster than the other had not really registered, until one day the large one eyeing his cage mate in a speculative manner. On my suggestion the two were separated and immediately the small one started to bloom.He became confident and glossy and grew far bigger in a very short time.

The other common injury to lizards occurs when tiny cuts on the feet become infected with bacterium of some sort, which results in abscesses on the bottom of the foot and to the toes. If scrupulous hygiene is observed and branches and cage floors are carefully and regularly disinfected these lesions will usually clear up, though they will frequently result in lost or deformed toes .Disinfect the injured feet regularly and, as soon as the abscess bursts, clean it well and pack the cavity with wound dressing powder. The same treatment can be used for abscesses on other parts of the body, though these usually occur only on the feet. When they do they are usually on a particular animal that must be in some way susceptible to attacks by the infective micro-organism, and if this is the case that lizard will probably continue to come out in bumps throughout its life .Invertebrates are rarely injured, and the injuries only take two forms.

The commonest thing to happen is that an animal loses allege. If that is the case do not worry about it as many invertebrates shed legs easily as a de fence mechanism and will often regenerate them. Other injuries can be avoided by taking extreme care when handling your animals. Don't drop your spiders on the floor, for example; stick insects are another animal that can come to grief through careless handling. Little ones should be moved using as oft paint brush. Larger ones should not be picked up by a leg, orbit will shed it, and it is very tempting to grasp them gently between finger and thumb around the body. DO NOT do it. Invariably the body begins to shrivel below this point until after a week or so it is completely dried up and useless. The only way to pick up a stick insect if you really must is to lower your hand over it and close your fingers beneath it so that where the two of you are in contac tit is because the stick insect is touching you with its feet rather than you touching the insect. This way it is enclosed in a cage of fingers, but the best way of moving them is to get them to climb onto a twig and move that.