Some paramedic jobs are literally going to the dogs.
A new program in Ottawa, Canada, is training a group of paramedics how to use their skills to treat injured police dogs. Not only are police dogs extremely useful, they also are estimated to account for an investment of more than $100,000, so officials in the city are doing their part to protect that investment.
“There’s a lot of similarities, except they’re down on all fours and we’re standing up,” Tyler Dearden, a veterinarian at the Alta Vista Animal Hospital who volunteered to teach the program, told CBC News.
The Ottawa Police Service currently has about 15 dogs in its canine unit. Those dogs go through at least four months of training to learn how to sniff out missing people, bombs and narcotics.
In an effort to be able to save those dogs in case of injury, members of Ottawa’s Paramedic Tactical Unit are currently taking the two-week veterinary training program. The program, which teaches paramedics how to treat police dogs injured on the job, is useful to paramedics, who are often the first people on the scene.
“We’re already there to do medical attention, and when I’ve been through some training, I realized how much dogs are really similar to humans,” Valerie Jacques, an Ottawa paramedic taking the course, said in the article. “If unfortunately something has to happen, we’ll be ready.”
Police officers who work with canine units consider police dogs particularly useful when it comes to tracking down missing people because their strong sense of smell allows them to cover large areas quickly. The City of Ottawa hopes to eventually train all members of the Paramedic Tactical Unit in the course.