Texas A&M Veterinary Team Uses Novel Treatment To Save Dog From Drug Overdose

Story by Megan Bennett, VMBS Marketing & Communications

October 21, 2025

A normal day can turn into a tragedy in only a matter of minutes. This was especially true for Dr. Keegan Crow ’25, whose dog, Ruger, managed to find and eat nearly an entire bottle of pills while home alone.

Fortunately, as a fourth-year veterinary student at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) at the time, Crow knew just where to go. He rushed Ruger to the Texas A&M Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH), where a talented team of veterinarians, staff, and students used a new blood purification treatment called therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) to save Ruger’s life.

Only three days later, Ruger returned home happy and healthy, with no lasting consequences from the experience.

Ruger was the SATH’s first patient treated with TPE — a milestone that followed extensive preparation within the Emergency (ER) and Critical Care (CC) services to acquire the necessary equipment, training, and staff for the procedure. His case represents an important step toward making TPE available on a full-time basis for patients experiencing drug overdoses or other forms of intoxication.

From Treatment To Toxin

Ruger entered Crow’s life in 2018 as a tiny, 8-week-old mixed breed puppy. As he grew up with Crow, who was an undergraduate student at Oklahoma State University at the time, his personality began to shine.

“He’s really snuggly and very friendly with other people,” Crow said. “And then he’s hyper-focused anytime you’re working with him, whether that’s fetching a ball or learning new commands, and he’s always happy to train.”

The pair moved to College Station when Crow began veterinary school, and during Crow’s third year, he noticed that Ruger was experiencing neck pain and took him in for a checkup. Ruger was diagnosed with a herniated vertebral disc in his neck — not severe enough to need surgery for treatment but enough to cause intermittent flare-ups of pain.

Crow was prescribed a large bottle of Carprofen, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), and was told to give Ruger half a chewable, beef-flavored tablet whenever he had a flare-up. Although the medication was successful at treating the pain, Ruger’s next flare-up would inadvertently cause a bigger problem only months later.

“I gave him a dose one evening and then woke up the next morning and went to class, which was the Texas Department of Criminal Justice clinical rotation at the time. A neighbor came and let him out at noon,” Crow recalled. “I got back to the house probably at around 4 p.m. and there were just copious amounts of vomit all over the floor and the couch.”

During those four short hours in the afternoon, Ruger had managed to open a drawer, pull out and open the bottle of Carprofen, and eat all the remaining 179.5 tablets.

“He had vomited a lot of it up, luckily, but I made a pretty quick assessment that it was a severe intoxication if he had any remaining in him,” Crow said. “I put him in the car and went straight back to A&M, this time to the ER.”

Trying Something New

Because it would be impossible to know exactly how much of the medication Ruger had vomited up, Dr. Gabriela Rivas, a clinical assistant professor in the ER Service, approached the case as though he still had the maximum possible amount of toxins in his system. 

“I was nearing the end of my veterinary training, so I was very well aware of all of the risks Ruger was facing from eating that much of that medication,” Crow said. “But my buddy from vet school, Joe Knue, happened to be on the critical care rotation at that time, so I knew Ruger was in good hands. I trust Joe a lot and that helped put me at ease.”

Having recently learned about TPE as a new treatment option for NSAID intoxications, Crow asked if it would be an option for Ruger.

“We originally discussed lipid emulsion therapy, which would be a good place to start because it interferes with the action of the Carprofen, but the downside is that it doesn’t actually eliminate the drug in the blood,” he said.

Rivas and Dr. Lance Wheeler, also a clinical assistant professor, decided that although TPE had never been done before at Texas A&M, it would be worth a try in Ruger’s case.

“Lipid emulsion therapy is beneficial, but it doesn’t come close to the level of benefit that you get from doing a therapeutic plasma exchange,” Wheeler said. “TPE is truly designed to decrease the concentrations of the toxin in the body, whereas the lipid treatment is designed to just trap the toxins and prevent them from causing harm while the body naturally eliminates them.”

The CC team began the careful, hands-on process to help remove the toxin from Ruger’s blood by taking out small portions of his blood plasma — the liquid part of blood that carries the toxin — and replacing it with clean, donated plasma. 

Although the SATH now has advanced equipment that can perform this process automatically, those supplies weren’t available at the time. Instead, the team performed a manual version of TPE, which involved removing safe amounts of Ruger’s blood — similar to the amount that would be removed during a blood donation — cleaning it, and then returning it to his body. 

After working for hours through the night, the team successfully filtered Ruger’s entire blood volume — twice over — by hand.

“It was very mentally and physically labor-intensive — I would compare it to surgery; you must remain laser focused while working constantly for six hours straight,” Wheeler said.

“Our pre- and post-treatment measurements showed that Ruger’s toxin levels dropped by 88% during therapy,” he said. “While an animal’s body can naturally clear some of the toxin over time, the reduction we achieved was significantly greater than what his body could have accomplished on its own.”

Making A Full Recovery

After three days in the hospital, Ruger was finally out of danger and able to go home. Other than needing extra rest and a few medications to prevent secondary effects from the NSAID toxicity — such as damage to gastrointestinal organs — he was back to his normal self.

“I’m really thankful for Dr. Wheeler and his expertise and, of course, for Joe and all the other students and residents who participated in Ruger’s care,” Crow said. 

Today, Crow is a small animal rotating intern at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine, where he frequently finds himself working in the emergency service.

“It’s given me a different perspective now, being an intern and seeing all the hospital workings from the doctor side,” Crow said. “It just makes me even more appreciative that everyone worked together and put Ruger’s care first.

“I have mentioned TPE at times as an option for patients, and although there is limited availability in where it can be done, I think it can be a really powerful tool in certain instances,” he said.

At Texas A&M, the ER and CC teams are embracing TPE and a similar treatment called hemoperfusion as new options for patients with drug overdoses or complex conditions like immune mediated hemolytic anemia, an autoimmune disorder in which a dog’s immune system destroys its own blood cells.

New, specialized equipment is making these treatments faster, easier, and more affordable, and Texas A&M is one of the few veterinary hospitals in the United States that can perform both procedures. 

“The key requirements for offering these procedures to dogs and cats around the clock are trained personnel, equipment appropriately sized for small animal patients, and a well-stocked blood bank — all of which are now in place at the SATH,” he said. “These three components are critical to sustaining 24/7 availability, and we are working diligently to ensure the infrastructure is fully established to provide these life-saving treatments to the surrounding community.”

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For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216

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