Trauma is a very common reason for presentation of dogs to veterinary emergency rooms, but it remains a challenge to predict the prognosis of dogs with traumatic injuries. Increased plasma concentrations of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) are detectable in people with trauma and correlate with prognosis, although the source of this cfDNA is uncertain. To date there are no publications of cfDNA in dogs, but we have recently identified that traumatized dogs have significantly increased plasma cfDNA compared to healthy controls. Current injury severity scores have limited prognostic ability and identification of an accurate, easy to measure bedside biomarker that correlates with injury severity and prognosis in injured dogs would be a major advance. The objectives of the study are to evaluate the accuracy of a point-of-care assay for rapid bedside measurement of cfDNA in dogs and to investigate the utility of plasma cfDNA as a prognostic marker in canine trauma.