Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Dog Emergencies

I can handle my own against pretty good spills off my bike & anything bloody, but honestly dog emergencies are pretty upsetting to me. Recently, Adam was involved in the care of a dog who had unearthed a hornets nest. His friend saw his dog acting weird from across the field and decided to see what was going on. As he got closer he realized the dog was swarmed with hornets.

Misty in the Fall

Misty staying out of trouble for once

They pulled the dog inside in an attempt to wet the dog to get the hornets off. Realizing that the dog's thick double coat type fur was infested with them and that wetting the dog would only trap the hornets, they resorted to pulling the hornets off with towels and stepping on them.

The whole time the dog was ultra calm, which probably helped her situation. They decided to get an emergency vet on the phone (it was a Sunday of course- all the serious stuff happens when the docs aren't in). Adam says there were hundreds of hornets on the dog and when they finally got the dog to the vet, they were still pulling them out of her fur. In the end it was a good call to bring the dog to the vet as the shear number of stings brought the dog into anaphylactic shock.

As you can see we've had our share of crazy events this summer and other dog emergencies as well. In an effort to be more prepared for events like these I've been trying to have a few more things on hand. The truth of the matter is, if you have your dog outdoors a lot eventually you run into some situations.

Scouting Around

I'm thinking about having a basic dog emergency book on hand like this one. There are some online resources, but it is hard to find good fairly comprehensive resources (this one isn't too bad). Anyway, if you know any other resources please feel free to share :)

3 comments:

Jay Dub said...

what kind of dog is she? very pretty!

Betty Mountain Girl said...

Thanks Jay Dub! She is a mutt, but mainly German Shorthaired Pointer we think....

Tiff :o) said...

How scary! Jasmine, one of my dogs, was stung by something in the last 2 weeks while I was on vacation. I heard her face was VERY swollen but I was out of cell signal for a couple of days so had to wait for more news. My husband gave her a benadryl to help the swelling but he was so worried about her and thought she might stop breathing through the night that he didn't sleep at all. In the end, she was fine though. We wish we knew what stung/bit her though because we sure don't want a repeat.

Once I started doing more outdoor things with Jasmine, I started accumulating a pretty good first aid kit for the dogs...and it has come in handy a few times.