When your blood's run dry,
And your plasma's gone,
You need some more,
And it must be done,
Who ya gonna call?

BloodBusters!!

And that was us yesterday - The Beastly Beasts became BloodBusters.

Earlier in the week dad spoke to Aunty Wendy from Pet Blood Bank UK on the telling bone. Seems that they had had lots of people asking for blood and were really running short. It was about time for us to donate some more so she wondered if we could do it like now and they would come to Beast Barracks to do it seeing as we had all done it before and never had any problems.


Caroline Finding My Vein

So yesterday Wendy, Heather and Caroline turned up at our kennels to get our blood. You would not believe the amount of stuff that they turn up with. But it was all dead efficient and soon the table was in the kitchen, equipment on the worktops and they were ready for us do donate.

The normal routine is we go in one at a time, get our leg and neck trimmed, get a bit of blood taken from the leg to see if it's OK, then if it is we go into the next room to do the donation while the next Beast get trimmed and tested. Today was a bit different, we all had the tests first then we all gave blood; it worked pretty well.

Wendy's the boss and has taken our blood before. Heather was there to help out and Caroline was learning to put in the needles. She did all the positive blood Beasts, but Jack, Mack and me have negative blood and she let Wendy do us as we are more important!!


Troy being Swabbed by Wendy just before Donating

We've all made at least three donations, for Kai and Troy this was their fifth!! And this time we all get a full blood screen, which I hope will show my blood is still OK; I had some raised enzyme levels last year which stopped me donating for a bit.

The great thing is that PBBuk now have about 1,000 dogs that donate blood and who knows how many lives that has saved? It's great being part of it and knowing that just for having a ten minute snooze with a needle in your neck you are helping hounds that really really need it.

Our friend Fisher turned up so he could have a sample of his blood taken to see if he can donate next time. He was dead good for a Labrador - they tend to be a bit wriggly (not like us - we have a snooze) - and if is blood is OK should be good to donate.


Kai after Donating

It took nearly five hours to do us all, and then the girls had to go back to the lab and process our blood. All we had to do was have tea and a snooze; I think we got the better deal. But from the sounds of it our blood will be going to help dogs that need it almost straight away and somehow that makes us all a little bit extra proud of what we did.