Pet CPR

From fires to floods to accidents, our pets are often in danger too. How do save your kittens lives if they stopped breathing after being caught in a fire?

How do you do that? With a little help from the American Red Cross. Charles James of the Red Cross in Los Angeles teaches pet CPR classes. They are so popular they've now made this new home video.

So how do you do it? It's similar to techniques used on people. Charles says:

• Check the dog if it's unconscious you want to check for breathing.
  
• Then you want to find out if it has a pulse.
  
• If you want to do CPR bend elbow to where leg meets body, give five compressions.
  

And if the dog is choking, Charles says, "If you come in and dog is choking get behind them put fist in belly pull up just like Heimlich maneuver."

Here the demonstration is being done on a dog, but it works for cats too, really any small animal. Pets now live in some 60 million American households. Pet owner Melissa Grebelsky says, "I took it because I wanted to make sure I could save [my pet] if she choked on a bone. I didn't want to watch as she possibly died."

There are now some 500 different locations around the country offering the class. There's a book, and now the new video. So if you love your pet, you need to be prepared.

Charles says, "We wanted to offer something a little different that would reinforce the first aid skills of training that we already offer out there and do it in a way they can do it on pets that are so important in their lives.