A near fatal.....

.....emergency was narrowly avoided.

Just over two weeks ago Tuesday evening I arrived home just as it was getting dark. As I was perparing my supper, Boysie came tearing in from the garden, hopping along on three legs and emitting a horrendous yelping noise. He plonked himself gently down on his bed and I rushed over to see what the problem was with his paw; which he held up to me with a pitiful look on his face! At first, I thought maybe he had been hit by a car but could see no blood or any indication of a confrontation with a solid moving object.

At that point, I became frantic with worry and whom should I call but of course, my friend 118Vicky118 and she gave me the number of her vet.  The vet told me to bring Boysie immediately to her clinic and half an hour later Boysie was almost comatose on the vet’s surgery table. On the way to the vet's in the van Boysie at one point looked as though he had stopped breathing and I pulled over to make sure he was still in the land of the living? To my great relief he was still breathing but only just!

The vet in no time established he had been bitten by a venomous snake, probably a blunt-nosed Viper, which had only managed to catch him with one fang on his right front paw, so therfore reduced the amount of venom delivered. Anti-venom injected and two hours later, with a cannula inserted into his other front paw and a bag of saline and painkiller pumped into him, Boysie fell asleep!

It is now more than two weeks since Boysie's encounter and he his back to his boisterous self but as the day wears on his limp becomes more pronounced as he just will not rest. The vet believes the snake’s fang may have damaged a tendon in his foot and will need time to heal. Well, if that is the only long-term damage, then Boysie can consider himself dead lucky; dead being the operative word!