Joey,
Where I live most vets do not use the antivenin for dogs. They only use high doses of steroids and painkillers. From what I've been told by several local vets this works and they do it because people are not willing to pay for the antivenin.

The vet that treated our dog used to live in Sweetwater TX where they have that horrible rattlesnake round up. He told me that he has treated so many rattlesnake bites he can't even tell me how many, hundreds at least. He had never used antivenin in his 20 some years of practice.

We were the first people he's ever encountered who were willing to pay for antivenin.
Although the other way works the vet told me that our dog recovered much faster than he's ever seen a dog recover, it had to be the antivenin that did it.
We use a different vet today who says the data on the testing that was done on this rattlesnake vaccine had positive results. We are in a very risky area so if the vaccine is BS then I guess we're out the $$ we paid for the vaccine.. I really don't care at this point. It wasn't all that expensive, no where near as expensive as the treatment for the actual snake bite in 2001 was. To me the money paid is worth taking a chance on the vaccine.

I don't know if we'll find out if it works and I hope not. We know that if our dog is bitten again we will have to see a vet no matter what, but if this vaccine helps the dog recover faster, then it's worth having the dog vaccinated. Faster recovery that results in a live dog is our goal.

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