Photo Provided A FIRST responder applies what he was taught by canine rescue veterinarian Cheryl Lewis during a recent class involving dogs and CPR that was given to members of the Belmont, Bethesda and Barnesville Fire and EMS departments.

BARNESVILLE – Some area first responders learned how to help dogs in medical distress when Cheryl Nelson, a canine rescue veterinarian from Kentucky, provided a CPR demonstration along with “Manni,” an animatronic K-9.

First responders from Belmont, Bethesda and Barnesville were present at the Barnesville Fire and EMS headquarters. Barnesville squad Capt. Alex Saffell arranged the class.

“The state of Ohio has a guideline for EMS where we can treat police K-9s mainly, and our village has a police K-9, so it was just a training that we decided to set up so our members are more aware of how to treat dogs, how to feel for pulses, how to do CPR, so we can also treat K-9 on some other scenes like fires,” he said

“She gave a little bit of the history of K-9s, how they began using them for police and military, and a little bit of anatomy of a dog, then we did some hands-on training,” Saffell said.

He said Nelson demonstrated basic treatment such as applying CPR and how to respond to wounds on a dog.

“It’s a very nice tool,” Saffell said.

He added there are state guidelines for treating non-police dogs, mainly focusing on emergency care.

“I’m still waiting to hear back from the state on the majority of the stipulations of what we are and are not allowed to do as far as treatment per dogs. Once I get that information from them, I can see if we can do some more in-depth stuff.”

He said they may schedule another presentation, possibly in a year.

Belmont Squad Capt. Kaye Hall said this was her first time attending such a training.

She said the canine dummy modeled after a German Shepherd was impressive.

“We were there for over four hours, and it was a constant deluge of information,” she said. “It bled, it had major wounds on it. It barked. She could make it breath. It was very interesting, very good. We learned a lot of information about dogs that I did not know, so the training was excellent.”

She found the information valuable.

“There’s so many service dogs now around with the sheriff’s department and police officers, and if something happens to them we’ll be able to help them and get them to the veterinarian and hopefully save their lives, but it was very interesting.

” He gave us a lot of handouts about what dogs, what will kill them if they consume it, how much blood loss they can have, how to apply a tourniquet to a dog. That was very interesting, because unlike a human, it won’t stay on a dog,” she said.

Other lessons included how to puncture a dog’s lungs to decompress them should a dog be suffering from heat inhalation and expanded lungs.

She said the Bethesda and Belmont police departments do not have K-9 officers, but the sheriff’s office has several.

“We can help those who are in a fire situation, or if they get run over,” Hall said. “Any situation where a dog is severely injured and needs our help. I’ve been on several fires where there are dogs. All of our squads have resuscitation equipment for canines. We’ve got those a good while ago and we’ve had to use them to resuscitate a dog, we have to give them air and have their lungs cleaned out.”