What to Do if Your Dog Is Ill or Hurt on Holiday

A dog falling ill at home is worrying. A dog falling ill in a town you arrived in yesterday, where you do not know a vet, may not speak the language and have no idea what anything costs, is frightening. The good news is that almost everything that makes it frightening can be dealt with before you leave home, in about twenty minutes. This guide covers that preparation, how to tell a real emergency from something that can wait, what to do in the first few minutes for the things most likely to happen on a trip, and how to find a vet fast in a place you do not know.

Do This Before You Leave

Find the vet before you need one. For every place you are staying, look up the nearest ordinary vet and the nearest emergency or out of hours vet, and save the names, addresses and phone numbers in your phone. Do it at home, with good signal and a clear head. Do not assume your hotel will have it. We ask every hotel we assess whether it keeps an emergency vet's number for guests, and of the 980 hotels we currently publish, only 189 said yes.

Take your dog's records with you. Vaccination dates, the microchip number, any conditions, any allergies and every medication with its dose should travel with you, on paper and as photographs on your phone. A vet who has never met your dog will ask for all of it, and you will not remember the name of the tablets at two in the morning. Pack enough of any regular medication for the whole trip and a few days more, because the same drug may not be sold where you are going. Our guide to the vet visit before you travel explains what to ask your own vet for.

Ring your pet insurer and ask one question: am I covered for emergency treatment abroad, and in which countries? Some policies cover you overseas and some stop at the border, and if yours does not, you want to know that now. Then put together a small first aid kit. The American Veterinary Medical Association publishes a sensible list, and the heart of it is simple. It holds the phone numbers you have just saved and a copy of the records, along with gauze, a nonstick bandage, tape, blunt ended scissors, tweezers, saline for washing out a wound or an eye, a clean towel and a spare lead.

Emergency or Wait and See?

The hardest part when you are away from your own vet is judging how serious it is. The AVMA publishes a list of thirteen situations that need a vet at once, and it is worth knowing the sense of it. Go straight away for bleeding that is heavy or has not stopped within five minutes, for choking or any difficulty breathing, for blood from the nose or mouth or in the urine, for a dog that cannot pass urine or is straining in pain, for any injury to an eye, and for seizures or staggering. Go at once too for a suspected broken bone or a leg the dog cannot use, for obvious severe pain, for heatstroke, for unconsciousness, and whenever you know or suspect the dog has eaten something poisonous.

For stomach upsets, which are the commonest holiday complaint, the AVMA's line is more than two bouts of vomiting or diarrhoea in 24 hours, or any vomiting or diarrhoea together with a dog that is clearly unwell. A dog that refuses to drink for a full day also needs seeing. Their closing advice is the best rule of all, which is that any concern about your pet's health deserves at least a phone call to a vet. Abroad, that call might be to a local clinic, or to your own practice at home, who can often tell you over the phone whether it can wait until morning.

The First Few Minutes

First aid does not replace a vet. Its job is to keep your dog alive and stop things getting worse on the way there. The advice below comes from the RSPCA's first aid guidance and the PDSA's first aid pages, which are worth reading in full before you travel. One warning applies to all of it. A dog in pain may bite, even the gentlest dog and even its own owner, so keep your face away from its mouth, move slowly, and get someone to help you lift.

Heatstroke is the holiday emergency, and the instinct to rush straight to the vet is wrong. The RSPCA's rule is cool first, transport second. Get the dog out of the heat and pour water that is cooler than the dog over its body, not its head, and fan it. Only when it has begun to cool do you set off, in a cooled car, ringing ahead as you go. Do not drape the dog in damp towels, which trap the heat. Our guide to heat and your dog on holiday explains how to recognise the early signs and how to avoid it in the first place.

With poisoning, do not watch and wait. If you think your dog has eaten something it should not have, move the dog away from whatever it was, and ring a vet or a poison line immediately, with the packet or a photograph of the plant in your hand if you can. Never try to make a dog sick, and never give salt water, which is dangerous in itself. Do not give it any medicine of your own. With bleeding, press a clean cloth firmly over the wound and hold it there for at least three minutes before you look. Then bandage it, keep the pressure on, and go.

If your dog is choking, look in the mouth. If you can see the object and can take it out without pushing it further down or being bitten, do so. If you cannot, or the dog collapses, the RSPCA's advice is to place both hands on the side of the ribcage and push firmly and quickly, or to lay the dog on its side and strike the ribcage firmly with the flat of your hand three or four times. Keep doing so on the way to the vet.

During a seizure, do not hold the dog down. Move furniture and anything hard out of the way, darken and quieten the room, time the fit, and ring a vet as soon as you can. After a bad fall or with a suspected broken bone, keep the dog as still as you can. If it cannot walk, slide it onto something flat and firm, such as a board or a parcel shelf, and carry it on that, because moving a dog with a damaged spine or limb the wrong way can make the injury worse.

Who to Ring When It Is Poison

A poison line can tell you within minutes whether what your dog ate is dangerous at that dose, which can save you a night in an emergency clinic or tell you to go to one now. They charge, and it is worth it. In the United States, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center answers on (888) 426-4435 at any hour, for a consultation fee, and the Pet Poison Helpline is on (855) 764-7661, also around the clock, for $89 an incident.

In Britain, the Animal PoisonLine is on 01202 509 000, open 24 hours, at £35 on weekdays between 8am and 8pm and £45 at other times. In Australia and New Zealand, the Animal Poisons Helpline is on 1300 869 738 from Australia and 0800 869 738 from New Zealand. Save the number for the country you are visiting before you go. If you are somewhere with no animal poison line, ring a local vet, or your own vet at home.

Finding a Vet in a Place You Do Not Know

If you did your homework, you already have the number. If you did not, or you have been caught between stops, start with the people around you. Hotel reception, a campsite office, a local café or anyone walking a dog will know where the vet is, and in most of Europe the pharmacist will too. Search online in the local language as well as English, because the emergency clinic may not have an English website. In France, look for urgences vétérinaires or vétérinaire de garde. In Spain, try veterinario de urgencias, in Italy pronto soccorso veterinario, and in Germany and Austria Tierärztlicher Notdienst.

Then ring before you set off. Tell them what has happened, the size of your dog and how long you will be. They can prepare, and they can tell you if they are the wrong place and where the right one is. If the language is a problem, type what you need to say into a translation app and show the screen, and hand over your dog's records. A list of medicines and conditions in writing crosses a language barrier far better than an anxious owner trying to explain.

Paying, and Getting Home

Expect to pay at the time of treatment, usually by card, and to claim it back from your insurer afterwards. Ask for an itemised invoice and a written summary of what was found and what was given, with the drug names and doses. Your own vet will want it, your insurer will insist on it, and if you are crossing a border on the way home an official may ask to see it.

If your dog has been seriously ill, ask the treating vet directly whether it is fit to travel and when, particularly before a flight. An airline can refuse a dog that is visibly unwell, and the entry rules for most countries require a dog to be fit for the journey. It is better to change your plans by a few days than to be turned back at the airport with a sick dog.

When you get home, see your own vet even if your dog seems to have recovered. Some of the illnesses dogs pick up abroad, particularly those carried by ticks and sandflies, do not show themselves for weeks or months, and your vet needs to know where the dog has been. Our guide to the illnesses dogs can pick up abroad explains which ones to watch for after each kind of trip.

A Closing Thought

Most dogs come home from holiday having suffered nothing worse than too many treats. But the owners who cope best on the rare bad day are never the ones who knew the most first aid. They are the ones who had the vet's number in their phone before they left, the records in their bag, and the sense to pick up the phone early. Twenty minutes of preparation is the whole difference between a fright and a disaster.