Our Angel was bitten by a snake this morning. A viper snake, the only snake in the Netherlands that is poisonous.
We took her on a nature walk, when suddenly the dat something and ran towards it. We heard a sissing sound and when we looked we saw a snake. At first we didn't realize it was a poisonous snake. I had never seen a snake in real life before, so I took some pics. We even joked about Angel daring to fight such a small creature. And Angel still wanted to get it.
We walked on, when all of a sudden we realized Angel was slowing down. She's an old dog, she gets tired easily, but still I got a weird feeling. Then I noticed her nose. There was a little wound. Looking closer I noticed two very tiny punctures, the teeth of a snake.
We went right back to our car, which was a half an hour walk, meanwhile searching the internet.
Driving home I called the vet. The lady answering the phone starteld, told us to come right away, she would make some phonecalls in the realtime, because there wasn't an experienced vet on duty.
It's quite rare in the Netherlands for a dog to get bitten by a snake.
By the time we arrived one side of Angel's head was swollen, she was drooling, and she was awfully timid.
The vet examined her. Angel's heartrate was way up, she had no fever, but she did need fluids right away. Angel had to stay at the vet's for the afternoon. The vet explained that there is an antidote availeble, but due to regulations etc, it had to be delivered by a courier. The antidote would cost us about 400 euro's, the delivery about 500 euro's. And there was no garanty it would help.
The only other option was to keep her on fluids and see if she would get stable.
We came back at the end of the afternoon. Angels head was even bigger, the drooling was awfull. Otherwise she was the same. We took her home. At first she was happy being home, but she refused to eat and drink. Later in the evening she started to shake and it felt like her heartrate was too fast again. We started to give her water with a syringe every 15 minutes. This helped.
We are not out of the woods yet. The antidote is too expensive and the poison is not out of her body yet. Her kidney's and liver will get an extremely hard job dealing with the poison, and we don 't know if they can handle it. Same goes for the other organs. It can be weeks before we know for sure if she will survive. She can 't have any medicine or painkillers, because of the liver. We can only wait, hope and love her.
We took her on a nature walk, when suddenly the dat something and ran towards it. We heard a sissing sound and when we looked we saw a snake. At first we didn't realize it was a poisonous snake. I had never seen a snake in real life before, so I took some pics. We even joked about Angel daring to fight such a small creature. And Angel still wanted to get it.
We walked on, when all of a sudden we realized Angel was slowing down. She's an old dog, she gets tired easily, but still I got a weird feeling. Then I noticed her nose. There was a little wound. Looking closer I noticed two very tiny punctures, the teeth of a snake.
We went right back to our car, which was a half an hour walk, meanwhile searching the internet.
Driving home I called the vet. The lady answering the phone starteld, told us to come right away, she would make some phonecalls in the realtime, because there wasn't an experienced vet on duty.
It's quite rare in the Netherlands for a dog to get bitten by a snake.
By the time we arrived one side of Angel's head was swollen, she was drooling, and she was awfully timid.
The vet examined her. Angel's heartrate was way up, she had no fever, but she did need fluids right away. Angel had to stay at the vet's for the afternoon. The vet explained that there is an antidote availeble, but due to regulations etc, it had to be delivered by a courier. The antidote would cost us about 400 euro's, the delivery about 500 euro's. And there was no garanty it would help.
The only other option was to keep her on fluids and see if she would get stable.
We came back at the end of the afternoon. Angels head was even bigger, the drooling was awfull. Otherwise she was the same. We took her home. At first she was happy being home, but she refused to eat and drink. Later in the evening she started to shake and it felt like her heartrate was too fast again. We started to give her water with a syringe every 15 minutes. This helped.
We are not out of the woods yet. The antidote is too expensive and the poison is not out of her body yet. Her kidney's and liver will get an extremely hard job dealing with the poison, and we don 't know if they can handle it. Same goes for the other organs. It can be weeks before we know for sure if she will survive. She can 't have any medicine or painkillers, because of the liver. We can only wait, hope and love her.
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I'm SO sorry for the poor girl. Please give her lots of cyber hugs from me! I'll say a prayer that she's okay. Wow, a snake??? That's very rare for just about anywhere!
