Vodka Saves Puppy from Antifreeze Poisoning in Australia
A 9-week-old American Staffordshire puppy in Melbourne, Australia named Cleo received a vodka IV drip that it's life from antifreeze poisoning.
The unusual treatment was done by the veterinarians that stated the only hope to stop the antifreeze from destroying Cleo's kidneys was to use pure alcohol as a cure.
"There's toxins in that called ethylene glycol and they're very, very harmful to the kidneys so what we need to do is give them alcohol and in this case, we gave her vodka to try and mop up some of those toxins," said veterinarian Matt Pascall about the incident, as reported by CNN.
The dog was given to owner Stacy Zammit as a Christmas present.
Around two weeks ago, Cleo began showing distressing signs of sickness after she licked antifreeze off of an unidentified car part.
Cleo's sickness grew worse with each night as she did not eat and cried constantly.
"She was giving us a bit of a scare because she was really disorientated, she couldn't stand straight, she'd fall over," Zammit said.
Eventually Zammit took the dog to her local veterinarian hospital where Pascall used his gifted bottle of vodka to cure the ailing dog.
He ran a feeding tube through Cleo's nose and into her stomach and the procedure emptied nearly a third of a bottle of vodka over the course of two days into the dog's system.
"If we put it in human terms, for me it would be the equivalent of having seven or eight shots every four hours," Pascall explained.
While she was happy to have her dog in good spirits again, Zammit was puzzled over the means that saved her life.
"It was quite funny, to be honest," Zammit joked. "Flushing her with vodka to make her better."
Pascall's gifted bottle of vodka was later replaced, according to KXAN in Australia.