Thanks to recent special training, firefighters in Ashland, Oregon, know how to perform first aid on any member of the family—even if he’s a lizard.
In mid-March, Ashland Fire & Rescue participated in a training session to learn how to use the new pet oxygen masks it carries on all its vehicles, according to the Ashland Daily Tidings. At the training, the newspaper reports, the first responders learned that small animals like birds should be placed inside an oxygen mask, while larger animals can wear the masks on their heads or noses, and that cats and dogs should be treated like infants.
"Pretend this is an infant or neonate," Dr. Alice Sievers told firefighters at the session. "The numbers are basically the same—there's just a few anatomical differences. We don't do mouth-to-mouth, we do mouth-to-snout."
The new training will help firefighters save more animal lives while easing the trauma a fire inflicts on human victims, Capt. Dana Sallee told the newspaper.
"A lot of times, you get the kids out of the house and then one of them forgot to get the pet, and they want to go back in," he said. "We tell them, you can't go back in, but let us know where the pet is and we'll do our best to find it."