Sick as a Dog

3am

10 pm

We knew that living in the country we should expect to run into snakes, spiders and scorpions. We soon found out it's hard to brief our dog on the rules of not sticking your nose into big, dark holes or getting within stinging reach of scorpions. We're not 100% sure on what exactly stung him in the face, but we're thinking a scorpion. There has been a severe drought here this summer, so the scorpions are continuously on a hunt for water sources which brings them into our house on a daily basis. On this night, I came home from work about 9:15pm and Zeus was fine, greeted me as usual. Around 10pm I noticed his muzzle had these hard bumps beneath the skin, and they were popping up at a scary rate. We gave him some children's benadryl then tried to call the vet. Of course it was a Saturday night and the vet didn't have an emergency phone line. I woke up about 3am to check on him and his poor little face had swelled to the size of a cantelope! As you can tell, he was miserable. We pumped him full of more children's benadryl and other drugs to help him with the pain and swelling. Luckily around noon the following day his face began to go back to normal, and then we got that return call from the vet. He said there was really nothing they could have done except give him more expensive versions of the medicine that we gave him. Thankfully Kit's mother is a nurse and knew what drugs a dog can have and what drugs can be taken with others. Funny thing is, when Zeus comes across scorpions now he veers far away from them and no longer has an uncontrollable urge to shove his nose at them. Old dogs can learn new tricks!