• i thought i might share this here, it might just help someone.

    this past weekend my dad was looking for something in the barn, he moved a box to discover a rattlesnake coiled up. his empty nest dog, as i call her, molly, stuck her nose around him. the snake bit her in the back of the head. dad scooped her up and got mom to call the vet. molly's eyes rolled back in her head. dad yelled to mom "she's dead". mom immediately started cpr. it is a 30 min drive to the animal hospital for them. mom would get molly breathing and then she would stop, so she kept getting her to breath. she had to hold her tongue down with her pinky finger. this continued for the duration of the drive. molly was put on an iv for a couple of days and given anti-venom. she is about 90% recovered and now at home. i know if my mom wouldnt have responded so quickly, daddy would have lost his "baby".
    so if you never have thought about learning cpr for your dog, i highly recommend it. maybe if you havent looked over the procedure in awhile, now is a good time. i hope none of you ever have to use it, but it is always good to know.


  • Oh, what a scary thing to have a dog bitten by a rattler! Before Abbey we had Bandit, a Shi Tzu that lived to be 16 years old. He actually was healthy until he had a stroke about a month after his 16th birthday. He collapsed in the bathroom floor one morning and wasn't breathing, so I grabbed him up and gave him several breaths in his snout. He started breathing again and I didn't need to compress his chest. Lots of people later asked me how I could do that, and I always say because he was my BABY, my youngest child! When we got him my younger son was 10 and he was 27 when the dog died! No matter how hokey it sounds to non dog lovers, your dog is your child. My boys were the three B's: Brett, Brandon, and Bandit.


  • How touching, Bandit had a wonderful Mom . . . I haven't ever thought about CPR on a dog. I should take another CPR class for humans too. Good reminders.

    I am so sorry for what your Dad's girl Molly went through. I've seen snake bitten victims on the Venom ER show on TLC. It is a painful-painful experience. Thanks for letting us know that CPR can also save our "babies". Man or Woman's best friend.


  • That's right Lenora. My boys are Alfie and Bandit and we have a special bond and some people think I'm crazy talking to them the way I do. I tell them that my boys do understand what I am saying.

    Alfie the Lowchen went missing one morning. My husband and I looked everywhere outside the back of the house calling his name, even out the front (eventhough Alfie couldn't have been there because of high fences)…... I burst into tears hugging my husband who was also crying (we honestly thought somehow someone had climbed over the fences and stole our darling.

    We went inside and for some reason I opened the door to my daughter's old bedroom and there to greet me was Alfie. I shouted to my husband to come quick I'd found Alfie. Alfie snuck into the room whereas I thought my husband and put him to bed and he thought I had.

    To this day we don't know whether he was barking or not because we heard nothing but silence.......

    Now we have Bandit the Basenji who means just as much to us.
    They are our darling boys.......
    Angee


  • We love Sahara as our little girl. We have one son who is 23 now and lives in another town, so Sahara is the only girl we have taken care of. We talk to her and call her our little girl all the time. I couldn't find her one day last week, I thought someone had stolen her from our yard, we have electric underground fencing so I knew if she had crossed it I would have heard her yapping. Anyways, I called, and called and searched the yard front and back, I was so scared. Then suddenly I felt this lick on my leg and there she was. She had been messing with the vent on the side of the house, got it out of the hole and went under my house. My husband has now fixed the vent with a new one, and Sahara can no longer get under the house. I was so happy to see her, I loved, and loved on her for the rest of the day. She is my little girl. 😃


  • I have been wanting to take the pet first aid (includes CPR) offered in my town by the red cross. Now I know it is something I need to do. Thanks for the push! The cost is only $20 and I believe that includes the class/t-shirt and a first aid book. Best of luck with Molly, keep us posted on her recovery!


  • well molly is improving everyday. she will be on meds for a couple more weeks. she is still not herself, but she is starting to want to play.
    as for the snake….i will give you my mother's rendition
    "your dad tore the barn apart, shot the snake, and a hole in the barn. then he laid the snake out, got the machade and chopped it into peices. it resembled sushi rolls when he was done."
    to put it mildly, that snake had bitten the wrong dog.


  • I am certified in people but not doggies. Is there an online resource that shows how to do doggie cpr?


  • here is a link. surely, it is not a substitute for taking a class. the last issue of "the basenji" magazine included instructions 🙂
    http://members.aol.com/henryhbk/acpr.html


  • Thanks Ambered! What a great link. I saved it to my favorites.


  • That's awesome…I'm glad the pupper is okay. I have to renew my Pet First Aid Certification. It only lasts a couple years...and then you have to retake the class. I guess that's something I'm going to have to look around Denver-area for.

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