whether dogs are like people and need to be “typed.”

Q YES, dogs have blood types — maybe as many as 12 — but there is a key difference. We have natural antibodies to blood groups that are not our own. If a person gets a transfusion with incompatible blood, the donor red blood cells are destroyed by those antibodies, which results in a life-threatening reaction. Dogs do not have natural antibodies — they only form them when exposed to incompatible blood. In an emergency, a transfusion can be done without crossmatching with little chance of a bad reaction. This holds true except in the unlikely event that the patient had a previous transfusion with blood of the wrong type.

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