Need for dog blood donors is up
Advancement of vet care has more animals getting transfusions
An 11-pound Chihuahua mix was found abandoned near Ocala National Forest in early April — shot, starved and left for dead.
By the time it was taken in by Erin Rae Swilley, the Winter Springs founder of Happy Trails Animal Rescue, the dog was in critical need of a blood transfusion.
“She shouldn’t have even been alive,” Swilley said. “Her blood wasn’t even red any more. It was sort of pink. She could barely lift her head.”
When her veterinarian didn’t have donor blood immediately available, Swilley dashed home and got her 1½-year-old Australian cattle dog, Boots. It was faster than trying to get to an emergency vet.
“Boots saved her life,” Swilley said. “It was miraculous.”
With the increasing sophistication of veterinary care and the increasing population of pets, the number of dogs getting blood transfusions is on the rise, and so is
the need for donated pet blood. Across the state, owners are being asked if they’re willing to volunteer their four-legged family members to supply a system that once relied heavily on dogs kept at animal hospitals solely for transfusion.
“There’s definitely a need,” said veterinarian Kirsten Cooke, blood bank director at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine’s Small Animal Hospital, where the number of canine blood transfusions has nearly doubled in the past decade. “Part of the challenge — because we are a large hospital and we make blood products for our own use — is that we have a pretty rigorous screening process for our donors. There are a lot of potential donors that don’t qualify.”
Currently the hospital has about 55 dogs that donate up to six times a year. Ideally, Cooke said, the blood bank could use another 20 to 30 to ensure it has enough for emergencies. About a pint of blood is drawn each time. Dogs are expected to take it easy immediately afterward and be given plenty of food and water, but veterinarians say the procedure rarely fazes them.
Elsewhere in Florida, pet hospitals in Tampa, Brandon, Clearwater and Miami welcome dog and cat blood donors, with such perks as free food and heartworm prevention, vaccinations, yearly exams and sometimes credit toward veterinary bills — in addition to immediate treats and toys. While there is no pet blood bank in Orlando that, so far at least, invites donations from the public, Cooke said some owners make the nearly two-hour trek from Orlando to Gainesville to enlist their dogs in the blood bank there.
Standards are strict. Typically, dogs must be at least 50 pounds, 1 to 7 years old,
healthy, current on vaccinations and heartworm and tick prevention, not pregnant and calm enough to sit still for the 10 to 15 minutes it takes to collect the blood. Temperament, it turns out, disqualifies a lot of would-be donors — and it’s why UF doesn’t collect cat blood, though other pet blood banks do.
“You can imagine asking a cat to sit still for the donation,” Cooke said. “Cats usually need to be given sedation, and I don’t want to sedate somebody’s pet and have something happen to them.”
Instead, the hospital adopts cats, screens them for infectious diseases, and uses them as donors for about three years, after which they’re found a permanent home.
“It definitely saves lives,” Cooke said of the process.
It used to be the same for dogs, and it still is in some places, including parts of Texas and California, where pet blood banks have been heavily criticized by animal rights advocates who argue that, because of their social nature, dogs in particular shouldn’t live in institutions.
Pet blood donation also has become more commercialized and sophisticated in typing, cross-matching and separating blood into red blood cells and plasma. But for many general veterinary practices, the main donors are notably informal. They’re the staff ’s pets.
“On those occasions when we need a transfusion, one of my dogs comes to the clinic and donates,” said Dr. Rick Marrinson, owner of Longwood Veterinary Clinic. “I’ve got two dogs that are over 50 pounds right now, so even if one has donated, on the rare chance that we need another donation in a short period of time, I’ve got a spare. I’ve used my cat before, too … I guess this is the price you pay for being a veterinarian’s pet.”
Blood products can be expensive to stock, and they have a limited shelf life, so these days most transfusions are done at specialty clinics and emergency vet hospitals that store blood. Marrinson said fewer are done in general practice than 20 years ago.
“Before we had all these amazing flea [prevention] products that we currently enjoy, we wouldn’t go a week without transfusing at least one dog and/or cat,” he said. “It was every single week — because they were anemic from all these fleas biting them.”
Researchers have identified at least a dozen blood groups in dogs, and eight types are recognized as international standards. There are three blood types in cats.
But unlike cats, dogs are usually able to safely receive an initial transfusion without typing the blood.
“You get a freebie,” said Dr. Roman Pilip of Aloma Jancy Animal Hospital in Oviedo — the clinic where Swilley took the critically ill Chihuahua and which usually has a staff pet handy for emergencies. “Dogs don’t have the antibodies that react to blood that first time the way cats do in most cases. It’s still a good idea to type the blood if you have time, but in cases with acute blood loss — like this pup had — you just need to get any type of blood transfused quickly.”
In 17 years of practicing critical care and emergency veterinary medicine, Pilip said, he had never seen a dog with a lower measure of red blood cells than the one Swilley brought in on April 11. Statistically speaking, the dog shouldn’t have survived. But right after the transfusion, she started lifting her head and sitting up, and the color of her gums began changing from paper-white to healthy pink.
Swilley named her “Little,” and to raise money for the 2-year-old’s growing vet bills, she has made T-shirts with Little’s picture and the Shakespearean line, “Though she be but Little, she is fierce.” After surgery to amputate one of Little’s front legs, where a bullet shattered her joint, she will recuperate further, and then she’ll be adopted.
“Little still has a ways to go,” Swilley said. “But she is so sweet, and she’s got cattle dog blood in her now. That’ll make her tough.”
“On those occasions when we need a transfusion, one of my dogs comes to the clinic and donates.”
— Dr. Rick Marrinson, owner of Longwood Veterinary Clinic