The Highway Scare Where Our ARCA PET First Aid Kit Earned Its Spot

The rest area in South Dakota had a strip of grass, a picnic table and a trash can, and that was the whole of it. We were on the drive home from the Black Hills. Dot walked into the grass and came back on three legs.

Dot is our border collie mix, five years old and thirty-eight pounds, and she is the nervous one. She paces in new rooms. So when she hopped up on three legs I figured she had stepped on something sharp and wanted a little sympathy. Then I saw the blood on the concrete, coming from a front pad, and I stopped figuring anything.

Here is the part that matters. I had an ARCA PET first aid kit under the driver's seat, and I had put it there four months earlier for a reason that was not dramatic at all. In March, Dr. Lindqvist asked me what I carried in the car for the dogs. I said a jug of water and a spare leash. She did not lecture me. She just waited a beat, the way she does, and I went home and ordered the kit.

So at that rest area I opened the case, took out gauze and a bandage, and rinsed the pad with water from the gallon jug I keep behind the seat. Gene held Dot's collar. She let me wrap it, which surprised me. We finished the drive home and went to the clinic the next morning, and Dr. Lindqvist looked at it and said it was shallow and healing fine. No stitches. A cut pad on broken glass in rest area grass, and the whole repair was a rinse, some gauze and a bandage.

Two things have come out of that case since I bought it: the tick removal tool and that roll of gauze. That is the whole scorecard, and I would buy it again tomorrow.

Two things have come out of that case since March: the tick tool and a roll of gauze. That is the whole scorecard, and I would buy it again tomorrow.

The ARCA PET case is 8.5 by 6.5 by 3.25 inches and about a pound and a half, which is the size of thing you can slide under a seat and forget about. It is nylon, it is water resistant, and the printing on the outside is reflective, which I found out one night in a motel parking lot when my flashlight caught it. It holds 75 pieces, and there is a mini pouch inside that lifts out.

The contents, as listed: a pet first aid handbook, an emergency muzzle, a tick removal tool, a leash, a flashlight, and antibiotic ointment. The listing also says the kit is vet reviewed and put together in a medical facility. I cannot check either of those claims, so I am telling you what it says and not vouching for it.

The tick tool got used in June at Backbone State Park, on Murphy, our Lab mix. He is the muddy one and he is also the one who collects ticks. It came off clean, and I did not have to go digging through a suitcase for tweezers while a dog stood there being patient about it.

The emergency muzzle has never been used. I am not going to pretend otherwise. It sits in the case because a hurt dog can bite the person trying to help it, and I would rather carry it and never need it than need it and not have it.

The mini pouch goes in my walking bag now, so the leash and the tick tool travel with me even when the big case stays in the car. That split is the most useful thing about how this kit is put together.

My one complaint is that I had to sit at the kitchen table and read the handbook to learn what was actually inside. The outside of the case does not tell you. Some of the contents are basic, the sort of thing you could gather yourself over a few shopping trips. What I bought, in the end, was not having to think about any of it at ten in the morning at a rest area in South Dakota.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Call your vet. That is the first thing, and it is the thing I would say before anything else. I am not a vet and I am not a vet tech and I have never tested a single safety claim in my life. If your dog is bleeding and it does not stop, or the cut is deep, or the dog is still favoring the leg hours later, you get in the car and you go. A kit buys you time and a clean bandage. It does not buy you a diagnosis.

The second thing is to open the case before you need it. Sit down with it, take everything out, read the handbook, put it back. I did that in March, and that is the only reason I was not reading anything at that rest area. The third thing is to keep it where you can reach it with one hand from the driver's seat, because that is where you will be reaching from.

And the last thing is that no piece of gear changes the math on a bad injury. Dot's cut was shallow. If it had been deep, I would have wrapped it and driven straight to a clinic instead of finishing the drive home. The kit would still have been worth having. It just would not have been the point.