What to Do for a Dog Wound When Hiking in Colorado
In this article, you’ll learn how to care for a dog wound when hiking:
(1) What supplies you’ll need — and how you can improvise
(2) What to do for a bleeding paw
(3) What to do for a chest or abdomen wound
One minute you and your dog are climbing through aspen forests or trekking across open space in Douglas County, and the next minute?
The unexpected happens.
Your dog steps on a barbed wire, brushes against scrub oak and cuts himself, or accidentally runs into a foreign object (like a stick).
Breathe deep. Don’t panic. You can handle this.
Here are Dr. Melanie’s tips for what to do for a dog wound when hiking.
Even if the wound seems minor, call your veterinarian and/or contact an emergency vet near your hiking location as soon as you can.
First aid supplies you’ll need
Ideally, you have some basic first aid supplies in your pack:
- Plenty of clean water
- Bandage pads (like gauze pads or Telfa pads)
- Bandage wrap (like Co-Flex or an Ace bandage)
- Medical tape
How to improvise: If you don’t have bandage materials, you can use a bandana or a sock.
What to do for a bleeding paw
First, flush the wound with water.
Don’t try to clean it. Just run water over it to wash it out.
Then, apply a bandage pad to the surface of the wound, wrap it with stretchy bandage wrap (like Co-Flex or an Ace bandage), and secure it with medical tape.
“The main thing,” explains Dr. Melanie, “is you want to keep the paw wrapped and stop the bleeding. You want to give the wound some pressure and keep it clean — but not too tight.”
Paw wounds are like human head wounds…
There can be a lot of blood.
A small wound can bleed intensely because dogs have arteries in their paws.
It’s possible your dog may bleed through the bandage.
In these cases, if you can carry your dog, that would be best. If you can’t, you’re going to need to keep re-bandaging the wound.
What to do for a dog chest wound or abdomen wound
Once again, you want to flush the wound with water and apply light pressure to stop the bleeding.
With a chest wound or abdomen wound, too much pressure can hurt your dog’s ability to breathe.
Just lay the bandage on there to cover the wound and loosely apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
If you have a Co-Flex or Ace bandage wrap with you, you can loosely wrap it around your dog’s entire torso.
If your dog has a foreign object coming out of his or her body, don’t try to remove it.
(Removing it has the risk of excessive bleeding.)
Leave the object where it is and get medical attention as soon as you can.