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Really glad you looked where you walk!
I had a hound dog mix get bitten last year, but we didn't know he'd been bitten - I thought he's been stung by a bee. I gave him a Benadryl. The right side of his muzzle got swollen, but he survived the night. (I slept on the floor with him,
) That was about 10 p.m. Saturday when he was hit.
The next morning, he was on the sofa being pitiful, so I took a pic and uploaded it to the computer. While cropping it I finally saw the fang marks! Nearly had heart failure! Couldn't get the regular vet, but shot him an email, Emergency Clinic is highly expensive, 30 miles away and they said by phone that they couldn't do anything anyway.
The swelling started going down 2 days later, I just kept syringing water into his mouth. Later, the vet told me they don't keep antivenom on hand because it's so expensive and doesn't last well. All he would have done was keep the fluids going and watch for infection. He didn't really want to say if the Benadryl had helped or not.
We did find the snake and kill it. I vac-packed it and froze it, gave it to the vet's assistant on my next trip to town.
We too only kill the venomous snakes that get into the dog yard- all others slither through in peace.
So glad your dog was ok.
I have 3, and they storm out the door one after another. My luck, he would have hit all 3. If it were left to my husband, there would be no snakes ... I won't let him kill the non venomous.
This is actually how the vet diagnosed "snake bite" on my dogs. If you have multiple dogs, one sticks their face down, gets bit, yelps, and then the other dogs come to see what the first one is barking at. The next one sticks their face down to see, and, well, you know what happens!
Yes, it is true that copperheads aren't necessarily "deadly", but why take the chance? They can be. My sister's cat died from a copperhead bite. And when both of my large dogs were bit, the vet said the bite was so close to their brains that it easily could have been lethal.
Good riddance to all copper heads. They seem to be a Georgia curse. Even our prior governor Zell Miller mentions the problem in one of his books. Folks just don't understand how overrun we are with them down here!
