As some of you may know while I still practice hands on veterinary medicine I now successfully make my living in various ways on the Internet as well and part of this is by giving veterinary advice. This as you can imagine is difficult via the net and the advice you can give has to be general in nature. The clients I deal with are all over the world, many in the USA, some in Europe, and some in a range of unlikely places like Iraq. It is not just the clients that are far ranging, my my on-line veterinary colleagues also come from a variety of countries as so reading their advice has been a learning experience and has furthered my own knowledge of veterinary medicine greatly.
Take aspirin for example this drug is often suggested by American vets, a vet from the the UK would never suggest to someone over the phone that they should take this drug without seeing the dog and even then it’s use would be unlikely. In fact suggesting aspirin over the phone would make a vet or doctor for that matter the object of many jokes in the UK.
However I have been finding out that aspirin is a useful drug and seems to be widely used in dogs in the USA. Part of it’s popularity is that the other common over the counter human pain killers such as Tylenol { acetaminophen } or Ibuprofen are not used often in dogs these days as there are much better alternatives for controlling fever and pain and there have been incidents reported of side effects and toxicity with many of these drugs. Another factor seems to me that many people in the USA { and of course elsewhere in the world at the moment } have little money to spare for their pets so in suggesting aspirin you area at least doing something positive for minor conditions.
On a short term home remedy basis aspirin would be much safer and more effective than the other available over the counter pain killers for minor conditions such as muscular strains or sprains or low grade vaccine reactions or fevers. A typical dose rate would be 5 mg per pound of your dog’s body weight twice daily. The final judgment whether to dose with aspirin when a vet has not seen the dog is of course up to the owners but properly used there would seem to be little risk. The points to watch are to carefully select the conditions it is to be used for, make sure the animal is not on any other medication which might interact with it and to give it with food. You may argue that to give such advice is erroneous and that clients should be pressured to see a vet, this may be the best approach in the UK but the world is not like that. Try and suggest to a client in a third world country that they should pay money to see a vet or buy expensive prescription drugs for their dog with a minor condition and you will see what happens, this is sadly not always possible.
Scott Nimmo BVMS MRCVS
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