Pacemaker no longer needed? Can you donate it to a dog?
Even with a 10-15-year shelf life for pacemakers, vets, schools and CanPacers' views on human pacemaker donations are mixed
When I heard a dog whimpering by my side, I looked toward the two dogs strolling down the street next to their owners. Neither dog looked all that interested in the dog I was walking (at that moment anyway). I turned to look the other way and didn’t see any other dogs. Surely it wasn’t the dog on the other end of my soft-padded leash, the same dog who froze and immediately darted away from any dogs we saw on our occasional walks since I joined Wag! in 2019. This dog was about as antisocial as dogs could get.
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But there he was. He was whimpering to get around me and play with these two unfamiliar dogs who were four times larger than him, and I was too confused to stop him. They checked each other out. I made eye contact with the owners to make sure it was cool to step closer. After a few sniffs, they were done with each other and I buzzed the door so the pet owner could let me in. That was still on my mind as I climbed the steps.
I had to ask the dog owner, “What changed?”
She smiled and said, “The pacemaker.”
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It turned out that this dog, who would’ve run away from dog parks and acted frightened around any loud noises, had gone from the shy dog at the party to the life of the party as soon as he got a pacemaker. It wasn’t a personality issue; it was a health issue. I felt like I was walking a brand new dog, who was socializing with everybody after wanting to be around very few for the first few years of him being a regular four-legged client of mine.
So when I saw the Yahoo! Life post about the Akita breeder who encouraged humans who no longer need pacemakers to pass them onto dogs, I was intrigued. According to the Cleveland Clinic, pacemakers nowadays can last as long as 10 or 15 years (the same amount of time as a small dog breed). But how would a human’s pacemaker help a dog?
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