+6 M E DIC I N E
I N
T H E
F I R ST
P E R SON
I dragged her 600 yards
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DECEMBER 20, 2013
AUGUSTA MEDiCAL EXAMINER
his past July I was leaving for a trip to Naples, Florida, to visit my mother and step-dad for a week. Katie, my Border Collie rescue dog, was going to spend the time I was away at her “doggie spa,” McDuffie Animal Hospital. Before I headed there and then off for the 10-hour drive to Florida, I took Katie for a walk. I have 5-1/2 acres in the country, which adjoins 300 acres of timberland. A path goes all around the perimeter of my property. Katie and I usually didn’t walk together. She was very shy when it came to doing her business, so I gave her plenty of space. I was a couple hundred feet down the path when I heard her yelp. She’s not really a
It was too late. barker, so any sound coming from her was unusual. The next thing I knew, Katie was flying down the hill toward me. She flopped down at my feet and her eyes rolled back in her head and she was panting rapidly. Katie weighs 75 pounds, so I was in a bind. There was no way I could pick her up and carry her about 600 yards to the car. I ran toward the house, calling neighbors as I ran, but nobody was home. I got a tarp out of the back of my Jeep and headed back to Katie. By this time I had reached a friend of mine
who was on the way, and also Dave, the vet tech at McDuffie Animal Hospital. I had seen two bite marks on Katie’s nose, so we had a hunch she had been bitten by a snake. Dave said to bring her in right away, but that we probably had an hour and a half window of opportunity to save her. Beyond that it would be too late. It wasn’t going to take me a fraction of that time. I would have gotten her there in five minutes if I could have pulled it off. I ran back to Katie with the tarp, rolled her onto it and dragged her all the way back to the Jeep. Within five minutes, my friend drove up. We did the one-two-three-heave and got her into the Jeep. By this time Katie’s breathing was really labored, but I flew
the 7 miles to the clinic, hell bent for leather. I figured if I was pulled over I would just keep going, so it was a good thing I didn’t see any cops. Even though I got there in record time, when I opened the back of the Jeep she was perfectly still. It was too late. I went in and told them there was no rush; Katie was gone. The speed of it all didn’t really add up, so Dr. Lauren Ducey at McDuffie Animal Hospital did a blood test. The results showed a massive amount of venom in Katie’s bloodstream. They called the Department of Natural Resources to report their findings, and the DNR got in touch with me. I showed them where it happened and they set up a trap baited with live mice in a little cage within the trap. That trap snagged a 12foot long, 8-inch diameter diamondback rattlesnake. They said they would take it to a “reptile rescue” facility. I’m normally a live-andlet-live kind of person, but
after losing Katie I thought it would only be fair if I got a pair of boots out of that snake, but it wasn’t to be. Katie was the sweetest dog and was very smart, but was timid when I first got her. If you moved too fast she would cower in fear, but with love and attention she had really blossomed. There was a chow mix named Scrappy at the hospital that someone had brought in for boarding, but they never came back for it. I had planned to bring Scrappy home with me when I got back from Florida to keep Katie company, but instead it was just Scrappy coming home with me. I want to express my thanks to the staff at McDuffie Animal Hospital throughout all of this, and several other adventures I’ve had with my animals this year. They’re truly awesome. + — submitted by Nancy Gardner Thompson, Georgia
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