Summertime: The Perfect Time to Vaccinate Your Dog for Snakebites

West Point, Miss. (WCBI) – Finally, warmer weather!

There’s no better time to take your dog out for a jog or a game of fetch.

But if left alone outside, a curious dog could find itself tangling with a snake.

In the back yard, by lakes and streams, even under rocks.

In Mississippi, we know there are many varieties of poisonous snakes.

A cost-effective vaccine can protect your pet from severe injury, even if it’s been bitten.

Meet Hershey, a 4-year-old Australian Shepherd.

Once a year, Hershey gets the vaccine that has saved her life on 3 separate, but similar, occasions, a snake bite.

“I see so many poisonous snake bites in dogs,” said Emerson Hospital owner and operator, Dr. Karen Emerson.

For Hershey, because of the vaccination, the bite area hardly shows any side effects from venom.

“Basically the tissue did not die. She did not swell up in the face; her organs didn’t start to go into shutdown,” Emerson said, listing all of the complications that come with one snake bite. “The immunity from that vaccine protected her from being bitten by Copperheads.”

For dogs, the vaccine is titled as “Rattlesnake Vaccine,” but Emerson tells us that’s not the only snake it protects against.

“It will help cross protect against Copperheads and water moccasins,” she said.

The alternative to not getting the vaccine, should a dog get bitten, is more costly to both the pet and the owner.

“If you yourself are out in the woods and you get bitten by a rattlesnake, you have to go to the hospital. You have to get anti-venom, and it turns into thousands and thousands of dollars for humans,” Emerson said. “In dogs, anti-venom that we can get runs into thousands and thousands of dollars. It’s just not economically practical for an owner to be able to spend that money on anti-venom.”

But the optional vaccine only costs around $20.

Emerson says around 65% of her clients give the vaccine to their pets and hopes that percentage will rise.

“Why not protect your pets against something that can kill them,” she said emphatically.

This comes at a good time because the end of April beginning of May period is the beginning of the
season, when we see many of these snakes coming out.

Again, the vaccine is only twenty dollars, a good value for protecting man’s best friend.