My youngest niece is a veterinarian. She owns a large dog of some sort that has been used as a blood donor. Obviously (I hope) the recipient is another dog.
I’ve lived far longer than i thought i would and in that time it has never occurred to me that dogs might need a blood transfusion. Now i wonder about all the other domestic critters. I need to talk to my niece more often.
This is about as mundane and pointless bit of information as I can imagine. Have a good day.
Yes, it is fairly common for large animal hospitals to even have days set aside for their canine blood donors to come and and give. At the vet hospital associated with the university I work for, they give the donor dogs a discount on regular veterinary care.
Greyhounds are “universal donors” for dogs. They have high levels of RBC’s and low levels of platelets relative to other dogs.
Oh yes, animals suffer from the same sorts of injuries and illnesses that cause humans to need blood. Not just whole blood, but separated blood products, too. Plasma, platelets, red cells, and in horses certain immunoglobulins. They also have blood types, though they’re not the same as human blood types.
I know for sure there are veterinary blood banks (usually at your local emergency and/or specialty) clinic for dogs, cats, and horses. I doubt that anybody ever tries to transfuse anything smaller than a cat, partly because trying to get significant amounts of blood out of veins that small is really, really hard and partly because people tend not to want to spend that kind of money on bunnies and hamsters and such. Livestock like pigs, goats, and cattle I really don’t know about. As an educated guess I’d say most likely not, because it’s not particularly cost-effective. Someone who was exceedingly devoted to a pet goat or whatever might be willing to give it a shot, but I doubt that’s common enough they maintain a blood bank for those species.
On a slightly related note, I was once tine-tested for allergies, and one of the allergens they tested for was “hamster,” since we had a pet hamster at the time.
A thought occurred to me – where do they get the hamster allergens from? So I asked, hoping that someone wasn’t grinding up hamsters in a lab somewhere. The allergist told me that they only use fur, from shaved hamsters…and that the people who professionally provide this fur are called hamster ranchers.
Ranching! I’m envisioning a hamster drive, with the hamsters running in place on wheels, of course, and “hamboys” urging them onward – themselves mounted on stationary bikes, of course.
When my cat Peggy had to have surgery about ten years ago, she was transfused by the office cat, Charley!
And singing, “Git along, little hammy. Yippee-ki-yo!”
And teeny-weeny tumbleweeds. Gotta have them.
Not only blood transfusions, but dogs can receive bone marrow transplants too. It’s rare, because it’s rather expensive (on the scale of buying a new car to…buying a more expensive new car) but the process is pretty similar to the one that humans undergo. Dogs tolerate chemotherapy really well, and it seems that the various markers to match donors to recipients are more evenly found in the canine population, so finding good matches is a little bit easier than with people (siblings and parents tend to be the best matches, though).
At my friend’s vet school, they had a group of greyhounds “on staff” for exactly this purpose, for the reasons stated by Minnie Luna.
This is awesome. Thanks for sharing this esoteric bit of info!
Yes, there are canine blood banks. Our local vet hospital has one, and friends of mine who also have greyhounds have participated in it.
I sometimes think I haven’t learned anything at all when things like this pop up.
Thanks for all the responses.
That’s the wonderful thing about the world–no matter how much you know, there’s a whole world of stuff still to discover.
I would guess then that you have not heard of feline renal transplant? They have been done for almost 30 years. It of course raises ethical questions since the donor cat cannot consent, but those who do the transplants have decided that the donor cat must be adopted by the receipient’s owner thus saving a cat from death row in exchange for surgery. In other words-the original cat must apparently stay in close proximity to his kidney, whether or not said kidney actually resides inside another cat.
I’ve been to conferences explaining the procedures for blood transfusion in ferrets. And I know that horses and cows (particularly newborns) can have diseases that require blood transfusion.
All species have different blood types, too. But, unlike humans, some species don’t have pre-formed antibodies to the other blood types. And even if they do, most reactions in many species are not as severe as human ones. There are exceptions and odds in all of this, of course.
My own dog is a blood donor at the local UGA clinic. The staff loves her, and she loves the petting. I say that being a blood donor is her job.
My niece says that the dog i mentioned in the OP is the go-to blood donor at the clinic where she is employed.
When my kitty developed hemolytic anemia a few years ago I soon discovered that although my town has an animal blood bank they don’t stock cat blood. My vet used her own cat to provide mine with the two transfusions that saved her furry little butt. I’d worked in human blood banking for years but up to then hadn’t thought much about the animal version. Pretty neat.
There’s a cat in my vet’s office, living the life of Riley and receiving the best of care. Marcus has the run of the place, and everyone loves him.
He’s also “staff” because he’s there to be a blood donor if there’s an emergency.
We have two police dogs, so my husband stays pretty up-to-date on canine first aid. ISTR him saying that, in a pinch, a dog can receive human blood - type A, I think. Am I remembering correctly? (This came up in some road trip conversation, late at night, and randomly chatting to stay alert, so my recall is kind of fuzzy.)
I have so many questions! Please?
How big is a “unit” of blood for a dog? How long does it take to collect a unit? How many units in a Great Dane? How many units in a pug?
How do they do collection? Do they sedate the animal? Or can only very tolerant patient animals be used for donation?
How do you keep the blood flowing if the animal can’t squeeze the little rubber barbell?
Can horses be given mule or donkey blood? What about the other way around?
Does veterinary medicine use any artificial blood replacement products?
It just tickles me to think that the office cat is a walking bag o’ blood for clients!
No, that is not correct. Dogs have a blood type called Type A but they are not interchangeable with human Type A. Dogs can receive some human products (albumin and erythropoietin) but the risk of a reaction with those is high. They can receive “artificial blood” which is also used in humans but is made from cow hemoglobin.
I remember many years ago when ferrets were not sold pre-spayed so many female ferrets would go into heat and develop anemia. We’d often have the owners bring in their other ferrets (if they had them) to be used as a blood donor. We didn’t type or crossmatch because there was really no other option to save the animal.
Okay, that makes sense! I knew there was something about a familiar-sounding blood type, and (the point of the whole exchange) that in an emergency of the type a working police K9 might experience, there was some blood product at the people ER that would be useful for a dog. (Husband’s work is in a mostly-rural county, and the nearest emergency vet is 50-90 miles away, depending on what part of the county he’s in. The retired K9 is such a love that I can easily see the staff at the county hospital ER working on him had he been badly hurt on the job.)