Proper Animal Restraint

Proper restraint of an animal is an important aspect working within a veterinary hospital as it can easily compromise the safety of everyone involved if proper technique has not been taught. Proper restraint can vary depending on the species of animal and procedure being performed. For this blog discussion, the species will be limited to dogs and cats. For a general exam in which the doctor will examine the heart, lungs, skin, ears, eyes, abdomen, etc., proper restraint for a dog would be to wrap one arm under the neck and around the head and the other arm under the abdomen and up and around the other side. This allows you to have full control over the head so that both you and the doctor will not get bit. Having one arm wrapped around the abdomen gives you more control if the animal becomes difficult to restrain. If a general exam is being done on a cat, you basically just want to make sure the cat does not jump off the table and remains somewhat still for the examination. In my experience, cats typically do better with less restraint. If, however, the cat is aggressive, more severe restraint techniques become necessary. This may include, sometimes in extreme cases, using one arm to grab the scruff (back of the neck, by the skin) of the cat and the other arm to stretch its hind legs outwards. By holding the scruff, you have control over the head in case the cat tries to bite and the other arm prevents the cat from moving too much. While there are many different ways to restrain animals depending on the situation and circumstances, you want to be able to effectively restrain the animal without causing any harm. Sometimes this takes practice for you to determine how much force effectively restrains the animal and how much force is considered "too much".