yesterday afternoon around ten minutes till six we had just finished eating supper and was headed outside when we opened the back door and shay nay-nay was sitting on the stoop like she does when she wants in, so we held the door open for her but looking down at her as she passed by we noticed that her head looked kinda funny and she was lumbering towards her pallet -- instead of her usual trot.
so we turned around and followed her in. after she sat down and got to where we could see her, we was like oh lawd!
at first we thought that someone had busted her in the head with a baseball bat or pipe or something -- but that seemed pretty unlikely.
then we got to looking at that dark spot on her snout and thought maybe someone had shot her with a .22. but upon closer examination we noticed that her "wound" wasnt bleeding nor was there broken teeth or tissue nor could we see anything like an exit wound.
then it dawned on us that it must be a snake bite. we've had dogs on and off all our life and never had one to get bitten by a snake.
so, by this time it was about ten minutes after six, so we phoned up her vet, got the answering service and he called back right away.
the vet said that dogs "very rarely ever die from a snake bite," (how comforting) and if we wanted to bring her in it would cost $75.00 for an emergency after hours visit (the amount goes up as the night wears on becoming $90.00 after 9 pm) plus maybe up to a couple hundred dollars for all the shots, etc as well as their keeping her overnight.
the vet said that if we wanted to treat her ourselves, that if we had some benadryl we could give her that. luckily we had some. we cut open a caplet and mixed it in with a little water drew it up in a syringe (without the needle) and squirted it into the opposite side of her mouth from where the bite is.
UPDATE: when we took her to the vet a few days later the vet told us that we due to her weight and size we could have given her 3 benadryls. she weighed 68 pounds [31 kg].
she was able to take that and swallow it all down. we repeated that after several hours. thankfully, all the drooling stopped right after we took the first set of photos.
that seemed to help and after awhile the swelling seemed to be going down some. by 11:30 pm she was able to drink a good bit of water from her inside bowl then we let her outside where she urinated and came right back in the house. where she promptly went to sleep.
by 7:30 am she was ready to go outside so we let her out and she promptly left to make her usual rounds.
at 8:30 am she was back and ate what looks like a usual amount of her food.
she seems to be pretty much back to normal -- character wise, except of coz for the big block head.
we're scheduled to take her in a day or two to the vet to get her heartworm pills and toenails trimmed; hopefully he will advise us if we did anything right or wrong..
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sha nay-nay 8:30 am cdt wednesday 31 march 2010
sha nay-nay from summer of 2009
