Puppy nearly drowns after falling into hot tub when owners looked away
Dog owners are being warned to keep a close eye on their pets around hot tubs after a puppy nearly drowned.
Boris, a 13-week-old English bulldog, was rushed to a vet in Gateshead after his owner found him in a jacuzzi struggling to breathe.
Having inhaled lungfuls of water, the puppy’s breathing was so bad his owners thought he would die, but specialists from Vet Now worked through the night to save him.
Sarah Cash, 34, has now warned others to be aware of the dangers after hot tub ownership soared in the UK during the pandemic.
According to This is Money, hot tub sales leapt by more than 1000% in recent months as families spent more time at home and used refunds from travel cancelled holidays for home improvements.
Ms Cash said she was checking on dinner when her daughter raised the alarm.
She said: ‘His breathing was so bad I didn’t think he was going to make it. We were devastated and felt so guilty.
‘We’d never leave our daughter alone near water and we’d turned our backs and this had happened to our puppy.’
Boris was rushed to the out-of-hours clinic where he needed a dose of oxygen to relieve inflammation of the lungs, vets said.
Senior vet nurse Ashley Wemple said: ‘The fact he’s a bulldog puppy means he struggles with breathing at the best of times.
‘This made him a very challenging patient. He was still wheezy the following morning and by no means out of the woods.
Boris was discharged on Sunday but Ms Cash said the ordeal was ‘such a scare’.
She said: ‘I can’t stress enough how careful people need to be with their pets around hot tubs and how dangerous the chlorine can be.
‘You need to have eyes in the back of your head.’
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