A short instructional video transcript by Dr. Lera Clone (Heron Lake SAM Hospital) demonstrating safe techniques to lift small dogs with congestive heart failure or after abdominal/chest surgery to minimize chest/abdominal pressure and provide stability. Demonstrates two hands-on methods—supporting from the chest and cupping the body—to avoid pressure on incisions and reduce dog distress.
Hey, guys. My name is Dr. Lehrer here at Heron Lake SAM Hospital. Today I'm here with Ginger and Ruby. And so we had somebody who found one of our videos helpful online. It was a congestive heart video with a severely enlarged heart. And one of the questions that this particular person was asking, her username was Vindictive, and she has a Pekingese who has an enlarged heart as well. And she was saying that she had noticed that her dog had a lot of difficulty walking or breathing after about three to five minutes. And she wanted to know, should she just let her sit there and kind of calm down, or should she pick her up? And she didn't know how to. And so the way that I'm going to show you how to pick up your babies to reduce the amount of pressure that's going on. The chest is also helpful after a surgery where there's an abdominal incision or a chest incision. That's the approach I'm going to take. And then I'll show you another technique as well. So this is Ginger and Ginger, you're going to stand up for me. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn Ginger this way. And if you want to try and put as little pressure as much, you're going to come from here and here. And then you can just kind of pick them up like that. And then what will probably happen is you can see Ginger went ahead and put her feet up on my arms. And so that goes ahead and makes sure that she doesn't have very much pressure on her chest at all. Now, the other thing is, if you notice, this is also good if there's an abdominal incision where my left hand is kind of moving back and forth. This is after like a spay or a bladder surgery, or if they have to remove something from your dog's stomach. And this is just a different way to go about doing it. If you have a smaller dog and they do have an abdominal incision, but one of the other ways that you can do is you can go ahead and pick them up by their chest. So you'll slide your hand under here, and what you'll do is just make sure that all their weight is pretty much on the cup of your hand, and then just kind of pick them up like this. This way you're not putting any pressure on the abdominal incision, and you're also able to provide good stability. That's one of the main things when you're picking up either your dogs, your cats, they want to feel stable. If they don't feel stable, they're going to squirm. And so you see this? This is not a position that they feel comfortable in. See how she's squirming versus when I hold her like this, she feels very, very stable. She's able to stabilize her body against me. I'm able to hold her by her chest and avoid touching any sort of potential incisions or painful areas. So. So hopefully you found this helpful. Vindictive for your little Pekingese with heart disease. Guys, if you thought this was helpful, please subscribe, share, and go ahead and give us a thumbs up. Thanks for watching. Have a great day. And if there's anything else, just let us know.
