ROCKLAND – Do you know mouth-to-snout CPR?

American Red Cross instructors are teaching this skill and others at pet first aid classes in Bangor and Rockland.

And the classes are saving lives.

Pet first aid classes at the Rockland District Middle School helped sixth-grader Stephen Feener save his 4-month-old black Labrador, Katy.

The aspiring veterinarian recalled: “She was wearing a choker collar that pulled her skin so tight she stopped breathing. She started flailing around and her eyes rolled back in her head. She was suffocating.” Feener performed compressions on Katy’s chest, which restarted her breathing.

The American Red Cross in Eastern Maine, which offered the Rockland Middle School course, also administers monthly classes for the public. Virginia Reed, director of emergency services for Rockland’s Red Cross chapter, started the classes two years ago.

Reed still receives as many as seven students a session. The response has been positive, she said, adding that “it almost seems like pet owners are even more dedicated than some parents.”

They must be dedicated to digest the amount of information Reed delivers in her three-hour classes. Among other emergencies, she teaches pet owners how to respond to breathing problems, poisoning, bleeding, dehydration and hyper- and hypothermia. Students also learn to give a pet a physical, to build an animal first aid kit, and to construct makeshift muzzles to prevent nervous dogs from biting during treatment.

Judy Glover, the health and safety training coordinator for Bangor’s Pine Tree Chapter of the Red Cross, is a graduate of Reed’s pet first aid course. She now teaches her own classes. In three sessions she has educated nearly 30 students, ranging from adolescents to senior citizens.

Like Reed, Glover has her students hone their technique on dog mannequins with inflatable lungs. Her classes are aimed mostly at cats and dogs, she said, but students can apply some of the same skills to other animals. Rabbits, for instance, would be similar to cats.

“I don’t know how to do mouth-to-beak,” Glover said, laughing, but she said she is open to learning about all types of animal first aid.

Both instructors insisted that their classes couldn’t replace professional veterinary care. But as Reed put it, pet first aid does “stand in the gap, buying time until you reach the vet.”

And this could be a critical season for pets. “In the summer, dogs are swimming and exercising more and it is important to know how to protect them,” Glover said.

Glover has not set the location or date for her next class, although she hopes to offer one during the last week in July. The class will cost $25. For more information, anyone may call the Bangor Red Cross at 941-2903.

Reed’s next class is scheduled for 6-9 p.m. Monday, July 23. It will take place at the Rockland Red Cross at 312 Broadway. It costs $25 and she requests that people register by calling 594-4576.