Not exactly the title of an e-mail that I want to see. Maya is our youngest dog, and as I have written about before, a copperhead is a venomous snake that is nocturnal in the heat of our summers.

On Thursday Andrea called the dogs in for the night, but only Freya, the older, larger dog, came in. She went out looking for Maya with a flashlight and found her lying under the dogwood tree in the front yard.

She was very listless, and her face was incredibly swollen. Andrea deduced that she had probably been bitten by a copperhead. While not fatal to large animals, at ~40 pounds Maya was small enough to worry, so Andrea took her to the 24-hour vet.

They don’t use antivenin, but instead they just gave her a shot of Benadryl and a shot for pain. Now it is a couple of days later and Maya seems fine, although some swelling remains. It also appears that she hasn’t given up chasing snakes.

Oh, Andrea asked the vet how many snakebites they see. The answer was 30-40 a week, with one dog owner bringing the same dog in five times. I hope Maya is smarter than that, but I’m not betting on it.