The Dog With Nine Lives

Australia
September 29, 2011 4:27am CST
Well, perhaps we'll start calling her "Puss". We have a small kelpie bitzer cross - for those not familiar with the Australian kelpie, it is usually a sheep dog, highly intelligent, fast, and easily trained. She has two speeds - on and off. In the on mood, taking her for a walk in out local forest is something of an experience; she will hear somehting in the long grasp, point, and then dive headlong into the grass. That's all fun, but Australia has a wide variety of very poisonous snakes. After one of her forays into the wilderness, we noticed she had a couple of cuts on her chest, so off to the vet for a shot and an inspection. Two weeks later, still not healed up, so back for a ten day course of anti-biotics. Today, still not healed, so back to find out that the wounds are almost certainly snake bite, and it won't heal because it has gone necrotic. Eventually it will fix itself, but in the meantime we have a very lucky dog, bitten deeply enough to leave fang marks, but not so deeply as to poison her. Or else she got bitten by a non-poisonous snake or a very young poisonous one. And there was I thinking snake bite was deadly without anti-toxins. Whew! We've put a moratorium on the forest till the middle of next autumn. Have you had a dog survive snake bite, or have some other lucky escape? Lash
3 people like this
2 responses
@JenInTN (27514)
• United States
3 Oct 11
A bee sting is the worst that my dogs have survived. They are quite small though and it did make them ill. I am glad to hear that your dog is doing well...you might have to start calling her Puss...lol.
1 person likes this
@sharra1 (6340)
• Australia
30 Sep 11
I just heard on the news that there are more snakes than ever this year so it will be a careful summer. It is hard to walk a dog on the lead when she is used to running free but she will just have to slow down. We were just lucky that she had no other symptoms. I have read that the symptoms can be really bad and you are supposed to know what snake it was for the anti-venum. How? I never see what happens to her. I did not even know she had been bitten. I do check for ticks every time I walk her but I still did not see the bites. They were quite tiny at first but they have grown since then. If they get too bad it may be necessary to have the flesh cut out and hope it finally heals.
1 person likes this