You Need This Customizable, Vet-Designed First Aid Kit for Dogs
Just in case.
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A few weeks ago, my dog, Moose, began uncontrollably vomiting in the middle of my living room. As a dog parent you get used to various iterations of puke pretty early on, but this time I knew it was different. I rushed him to the 24-hour vet and spent the next few days visiting him as he recovered from a serious bout of Gastroenteritis. Luckily, three days and $*@#! dollars later (seriously, get pet insuranceopens in a new tab, folks), Moose came home, thanks to the wonderful vets who worked around the clock to get him back to his old self.
I was lucky that I made the right call this time, but what do you do when things aren’t so cut and dry? Enter the Uh-Oh Kitopens in a new tab: a customizable, vet-designed “medicine cabinet for your dog” intended to mitigate pet emergenciesopens in a new tab from the moment they start. The kit contains pet-safe medications (three for gastrointestinal distress and two for allergies and allergic reactionsopens in a new tab), as well as pet-safe hydrogen peroxideopens in a new tab to induce emergency vomiting.
In addition to the medications, The Uh-Oh Kit contains several dog specific medical tools that you might not otherwise have lying around (a pill splitteropens in a new tab, thermometeropens in a new tab, and oral syringe, among others). It also provides guides on dosing information — which can be hard to access via Google during an emergency (my thumbs barely type correctly when they’re not drenched in stress sweat).
However, while the Uh-Oh Kit can be a great tool for buying you time in an emergency, it is not a replacement for your regular vet or an emergency animal hospital. In fact, the kit is best used via the guidance of a vet via phone, text, or email. However, the kit can also be of great use outside of an emergency. Many of the medications are intended to be used for everyday illnesses and can even prevent emergenciesopens in a new tab when symptoms are caught early on.
In addition, The Uh-Oh Kit has a space for your vet’s contact info, your dog’s medical history, dosing information, and a recordable tracker of your dog’s vital signs. All of these features make the Uh-Oh Kit perfect for those times when you have to leave your fur baby with a pet sitter, doggie daycareopens in a new tab, or kennel. Take it from me, as a former pet sitter the Uh-Oh Kit would have saved me several headaches and a bunch of annoying text messages to their vacationing owners.
The truth is that “petastrophes”, as the Uh-Oh Kit likes to call them, are an unfortunate — hopefully rare — reality of dog parenthood. Similar to infants, dogs can’t tell us what’s bothering them – or, y’know, how many pebbles they decided to swallow at the park. That alone provides a whole other anxiety-producing layer of providing our dogs with timely and safe medical care.
However, this kit can help bring peace of mind while you’re away. It also gives your pet’s caretaker a baseline of your pet’s wellbeing, which can be especially helpful if you have a senior petopens in a new tab (keep in mind the Uh-Oh Kit is not approved for use in dogs under one year old.) And, when emergencies do occur, the Uh-Oh Kit empowers pet owners to step into action at the first signs of their pet’s distress; perhaps making all the difference when all is said and done.
Rebecca Caplan
Rebecca Caplan is a writer based in Brooklyn whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, Reductress, and Vulture. She lives in Brooklyn with her perfect, toothless dog Moose.
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