Many of us are looking forward to Memorial Day, the traditional start of the summer season. Summer means enjoying the breeze through open windows, barbeques with friends and family, and swimming in the pool or at the beach. But if you are a pet, each one of these summer pleasures can turn into a summer tragedy, requiring a trip to an animal ER like the Level 1 Trauma Center at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center. This blogpost highlights three summer dangers and offers tips to prevent them.
High-Rise Syndrome
In New York City and other dense, vertically-inclined communities, veterinarians routinely care for pets that have fallen out of windows or off balconies and terraces. Cats are the most common victims of this “high-rise syndrome,” but dogs can also be affected.
Some families report the pet jumping after a bird or simply losing their balance before falling. In more suburban communities, pet can fall off decks and sustain injuries. If a pet survives the fall and is taken to an animal ER, the survival rate is high. Injuries vary depending on the height of the fall. Falls from one or two floors typically result in facial trauma, while higher falls lead to broken legs. Prevention of high-rise syndrome is simple: install screens on open windows, don’t let pets climb on terrace ledges and supervise pets when on a balcony.
Monitor the Kebabs and Grill
While everyone, pets included, enjoys a barbeque, a dog’s indiscriminate eating habits make barbeques hazardous. Take for example the wooden skewers used to grill meats and vegetables. When ingested by a dog, they don’t show up on x-rays because they’re wooden, and they wreak havoc when they pierce the intestines. Even barbeque clean up poses a risk—the x-ray accompanying this blogpost above shows a dog that ate a metal scrubby used to clean a grill. It was covered in food grease and smelled delicious to a canine nose. Sometimes it’s the humans doing the grilling that are the problem when they “give a dog a bone.” AMC’s ER veterinarians remove bones stuck in the throat all too commonly. See examples below.
Water Hazards
Just like us, our pets love a day by the pool or at the beach. But many families don’t realize that dogs are not natural swimmers. Dogs can drown if they get into the pool and can’t get out. If your dog likes the water, but isn’t related to Esther Williams, try setting up a kiddie pool in a shady area to provide relief from the summer heat. For other pool safety tips, read my prior blogpost on swimming pool safety.
The beach provides its own unique health concern: sand impaction. Dogs that dig, bark and bite at the sand or surf can unintentionally ingest a large amount of sand. This is a problem because sand doesn’t move through the intestines very well. Too much sand leads to an impaction that requires a hospital stay and laxatives. For more information on sand impaction and its prevention, read Lola’s story in a prior blogpost.
Everyone at AMC wishes you and yours a happy and safe summer season, but like we have been for over 115 years, we will be ready if you and your pet need us this summer.
