Cat Health Care Tips : How to Perform the Heimlich Maneuver on a Cat or Small Dog

Let’s talk about the Heimlich maneuver in
dogs and cats. The Heimlich maneuver we thinkabout in people all the time, getting choked
on a piece of food at a restaurant and somethinglike that. In veterinary medicine it is not
something that we use routinely, however,it does come to play in the home setting on
rare occasions. Dogs and cats can get chokedon items, can get choked on pieces of food
and things like that. The first thing youneed to do is recognize are they actually
choking on something or are they trying togag or vomit. The way you know is typically
if an animal is choking on something theyare going to be opening their mouths, they’re
going to be retching over, they’re going tobe pawing at their face. So it is very difficult
and you can get injured if you look in themouth but that is the first thing to do is
if you can look in there, look at the tongueand gum color and make sure it is nice and
pink and not blue. If we do think that thereis absolutely a choking mechanism happening
that there is something lodged in the backof the throat then we might pull out the Heimlich
maneuver and the way you do that is basicallyis take your hands and ball them up and or
one method is to ball one fist up with yourpalm over the other one, right below, or actually
right in the upper abdomen and below the sternumand then use a quick just kind of gentle but
firm upper motion to try to dislodge that. The next recommendation is to get your animal
to a veterinary clinic as quickly as possible. It may not always be a choking situation or
it may be something that you can’t do on yourown.