Archive for Diseases of the Southwest Desert
Rattlesnake Bites
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Hi. Our names are Dottie and Daisy. We had a really hard weekend. It started with Daisy finding one of those long skinny squirmy lifeforms in our yard. Daisy started barking at it, to alert the family that there was an intruder, and Mom and Dottie came to see what all the ruckus was about. That thing started rattling, we started jumping at it, and it started lunging and biting us. Whew, those things are fast!!!!! Never saw it coming at us! We did save Mom, though, no bites on her! But alas, when the altercation was over, the score was Rattlesnake: 6, Dogs: O. It didn’t hurt so much at first, then our faces and ears started swelling. It was off to the vet rather quickly, then. Here’s what Dr. Paula has to say about rattlesnake bites: Number one, try to avoid them. Leave those squirmy things alone, and they usually will leave you alone. But that’s hard for us canines. We usually have to go to a snake avoidance class to ever learn that lesson — it just isn’t in our DNA to leave them alone. If you do get bitten by a rattlesnake, you need to get to a vet as quickly as possible. The more quickly the antivenin is administered, the better it will work. You have to have an IV catheter, get IV fluids, antibiotics and that antivenin, to have much of a chance to survive and keep your skin. You see, the most common rattlesnake in this area is the Diamondback, and it injects a hemotoxin into your blood — it causes your platelets to dysfunction, and you can bleed, and it causes the skin in the area of the bite to swell and die. So you get this really bad swelling, the skin starts to die, and you can start bleeding internally and/or externally. Bad stuff. That’s the kind of snake that bit us. There is also the Mohave Rattlesnake in this area that injects a neurotoxin that causes paralysis – glad we didn’t tangle with one of those, this guy was bad enough. So we spent the weekend in the hospital, getting IV fluids, the antivenin, and lots of pain medication. We don’t really remember a lot of it. We should get to go home soon, it looks like we’re both going to make it this time. I think next time maybe we’ll just bark and run inside to tell the family that another one has invaded the yard, but we’ll stay inside as the fire department comes to remove it. Now understand, we are still quite the brave little canines, just perhaps maybe a little wiser now. Well, maybe a little wiser, but it is so hard to ignore those things — how do they move? Have you ever seen a snake’s legs? Where do they hide them? It just isn’t right, you just can’t move like that without legs…..and they are so fast……What do you think Dottie, should we go outside and check again? You go first…..you’re bigger…..I’m right behind you.
Valley Fever, or Coccidiodomycosis
Posted by: | CommentsI have seen two dogs within the last two days, whom I believe have the disease called Valley Fever, or Coccidiodomycosis. It is a deep fungal infection that any species can develop after exposure to the sporulating fungus. The fungus lives in the desert, especially in our Sonoran Desert, and is kicked up by anything overturning the earth. That means the wind blowing, dogs digging, any construction jobs……..all of which is probably always going on somewhere near you. There are “hot spots” of the fungus around, but most of us don’t really know where those are in town. You know where your “hot spot” is, if you, your family, and all your dogs, have always gotten valley fever. It can be a devastating disease, if your immune system can’t throw it off. The dogs are much more prone to getting the full blown disseminated type of disease, instead of the flu-like self-limiting disease that healthy people usually get. The fungus can cause a cyclic fever, that comes and goes for a while, so your dog just doesn’t seem right, one day she’ll eat, the next day she won’t, or if the fever cycles on a 12 hour timetable, maybe they are good in the am, but not in the pm, or vice versa. It can also go deeper into the body and cause a pneumonia of the lungs, or it can invade any tissue of the body. Too often it invades the bone and causes a lysis, or eating away of the bone. This is very painful, and requires immediate treatment. The treatment can last from a minimum of 6 months, to a lifetime of treatment, depending upon the tissues attacked, and the immune system of the patient. The disease is particularly potent for the newcomer to the area, because they do not have any immunity to the fungus at all — their body has never encountered anything like it before.
So if your dog is just ” not acting right”, maybe it’s time to have a valley fever test done. The test can pick up the disease sometime after it has been in the body for at least 4 weeks. The test picks up the antibodies that the body makes against the fungus, so the body has to be strong enough to make the antibodies, and it has to have time to make them, before the test will show a positive result. Your vet will know how to interpret the tests.
If you are reading this and you have just visited our area with your dog and you are now back home, not in our Sonoran Desert, be certain to mention to your vet that you have been here, because Cocccidiodomycosis will not be high on their differential list of your dog’s problem, without that information.
