Among the many things that puppies shouldn’t eat, anti-freeze is generally pretty high on the list. That is why when Cloe, a 9-week-old miniscule American Staffordshire puppy, licked anti-freeze she found in a car port, her owners freaked out. They brought her to the vet and she was already dangerously ill.
There weren’t really any options for Cloe, who was hours away from renal failure, but her vet had a handle of vodka sitting in his office that he’d recently received as a Christmas gift. The doctor decided to run an IV drip connected to the vodka through the dog’s nose.
“There’s toxins in anti-freeze called ethylene glycol and they’re very, very harmful to the kidneys,” said Cloe’s vet, Matt Pascall. “So what we need to do is give them alcohol and in this case, we gave her vodka, to try and mop up some of those toxins.”
After two days, Cloe had consumed one-third of the bottle of vodka. Her vet says in human terms, it’s like Cloe had seven or eight shots every four hours.
Apparently, it worked perfectly and little Ms. Cloe is as good as new now. Vodka saves puppies, but don’t try this at home. To be honest, we have no idea how this little puppy could drink that much vodka and survive, next time we’ll have to do some more research.
The vet that I worked for in high school had to do this. They used grain alcohol and an IV straight into the dog’s arm. Dog went drunk and passed out and woke up alive and well.
Apparently the liquor store clerk gave a wink when he heard it was for a dog…