When our pet gets sick, our goal as their caregivers is to alleviate their discomfort. For this reason, there are those who consider that medications such as paracetamol or ibuprofen are good for remedying the ailment of their pet.
Taking into account that these drugs are very useful for relieving pain, reducing inflammation or lowering fever in humans, they assume that they will have the same effect in animals. But the truth is, no matter how well-intentioned, they are actually endangering your pet.
On the other hand, it may happen that you were the one who was about to take an ibuprofen or a paracetamol, but you dropped it from the blister directly to the ground. Your pet has been faster than you and she has put it in her mouth. Or maybe you haven’t kept these medicines out of their reach and they have ingested them by accident. Whatever the case, you should know the consequences that this entails.
Medicating a pet without a veterinarian’s prescription is an extremely dangerous practice. Just as there are certain human foods that animals should not eat, the same goes for medicines. Among them, both paracetamol and ibuprofen are toxic to animals.
Their organism does not work like that of humans, no matter how humanized your dog or cat is, so they do not properly metabolize the active ingredients of these medicines. Consequently, you will suffer damage to organs such as the stomach and kidneys.
Ibuprofen or paracetamol poisoning can also cause the animal symptoms such as apathy, drowsiness, weakness, excessive salivation, vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia, abdominal pain, difficulty breathing, colic, kidney failure and even alterations in blood circulation and bleeding. In serious cases, the death of the animal could occur.
It is true that the lethality of paracetamol is lower than that of ibuprofen. For this reason, some veterinarians do administer this medication to animals, but in much lower doses than those marketed or prescribed for humans. To do this, they must take into account the species of the animal, its breed, size, weight, age and condition. Again, it is important to insist that we should only administer to our pet the medicines prescribed by a veterinarian.
If your pet has ingested ibuprofen or paracetamol by accident, you should go to the vet as soon as possible. Try to clarify the number of doses that she has consumed, since it is not the same if she has taken a pill or a whole box. The vet will evaluate the circumstance and, depending on the severity of the poisoning, may cause the animal to vomit, administer fluids or perform a blood transfusion.
In the future, be sure to store the medicines in a safe place, out of the reach of your pets. And limit yourself to giving him only the drugs prescribed by the veterinarian after the pertinent review of his state of health.
