ALAMOGORDO DAILY NEWS (New Mexico) 28 September 06 Snake bites rise as rains flush out rattlers (Bev Eckman-Onyskow)

Pet owners beware. A rash of cases of dogs being bitten by rattlesnakes is being reported. Several have died of the bites.

"Be watchful, there are a lot of rattlesnakes out there," said Dr. G.L. Wiley, owner of Alamogordo Animal Hospital on Canal Street. His practice has seen a lot of snake-bitten dogs.

"I think the numbers are certainly up from normal years," Wiley said Thursday. "In talking with my colleagues here, we've had at least 10 cases in the last week. To my knowledge, all but one survived.

"Historically, we see only one or two."

The weather has much to do with it. "With all the rain, there are snakes in different areas, they can wash down out of the mountains," Wiley said. "With the cool nights and warm days, they are moving out into other areas."

Robert Jones, Alamogordo's animal control director, said that since the flood his department "has taken a dozen rattlesnake calls, from Abbott to First, Scenic to Hamilton. We've had eight to 10 calls in the last few weeks. They're diamondbacks and western rattlesnakes. We get a lot of snake calls, and 85 percent of them are rattlers.

"The flood really opened the gates."

Jones said that since he started on the job in November, he could not compare rattlesnake reports to previous years, "but talking to the officers, they haven't encountered this many before."

Jones noted that not everyone calls animal control for rattlesnake removal, that "a lot of people handle it themselves, and not all are reported," so there is no accurate rattlesnake nose-count.

Tina McIntosh lost Wrecker, her 9-year-old English bulldog, to a 4-foot diamondback rattlesnake last week. The snake was coiled up on a patio in her backyard, about four feet from the door of her detached garage, where she runs her Happy Paws dog-grooming service. Her home is on Hamilton Road near the city golf course.

"My bulldog got too close and got bitten on the face," McIntosh said. "That's the worst kind of dog to get bitten, because their faces are all smooshed in, and the venom caused breathing constriction.

"We got him to the vet, Dr. Joe Barben, but he died the next day. You keep them fenced, you try to keep them safe, you get the best vet care and then something like this happens. It is a brutal end to a life."

McIntosh called Animal Control, which sent out an officer who killed the snake.

"It's not just here, it's everywhere in town," McIntosh said. "The officer who came out said he'd removed five or six snakes in town. The snakes are so active now before they hibernate. This is the desert, and this is where they live, so they are all around us. We should be looking for them, but we get complacent.

"I'm surprised there aren't more snake accidents. We were on the way back from the vet after our dog was bitten, and we saw a lady in flip-flops out walking her dog in the desert, and taking its leash off."

Mannie Salgado lost her 8-year-old blue-heeler mix, Schercon, to a rattlesnake a few weeks ago.

"We weren't home at the time, so we weren't able to save her. We found her dead," Salgado said.

She lives in La Luz near La Luz Elementary School. Salgado said her next-door neighbors told her that her dog had been in a fight with a rattlesnake, during which it bit the snake several times and bit its rattles off.

The dog had been also bitten several times in the fight. The snake escaped into the neighbor's yard, where it was killed with a shovel.

"We were saddened, it was almost like losing a family member," Salgado said.

Salgado said she believes, along with Dr. Wiley, that the snakes are being washed down by the rain."We've had snakes in the yard before, but they've been bull snakes or garden snakes."

Dr. Wiley said he has reports of rattlesnakes "from Dog Canyon, from east of the golf course; from Tularosa; from all around down by the golf course.I've also talked with people who have seen them in town.

"We are, of course, concerned about people, especially kids, being bitten, but I'm not aware of people being bitten this year."

It is almost exclusively dogs that are being bitten, Wiley said, and usually on the face.

"Dogs are inquisitive. If they're not on a leash and they're smelling under a bush and looking down, that's when they get bitten 90 percent are bitten on the face. The rest are usually bitten on the legs."

A vaccination is available. "There is a rattlesnake toxoid or vaccination," Wiley said. "The first year they get two doses, three weeks apart, and then they get an annual booster."

The vaccinations are $25 a dose. However, if a dog is bitten and needs to be treated, "the anti-venom alone is in the neighborhood of $500," Wiley said. "Usually you have to give other supportive therapy, steroids and antibiotics."

Wiley said that he recently spoke with a pharmaceutical representative who travels around the Southwest, visiting veterinarians.

"He said he'd been in the Tucson area, and he had been told about some 50 dogs that had been vaccinated, then had been bitten by rattlesnakes, and none died. They had to have some treatment with antibiotics." But, he added, "not near the extensive treatment required" on the scale of the $500 anti-venom shots.

Salgado, whose dog was bitten and died, said she "didn't know there was such a thing as a vaccination. That's why it didn't occur to me to get the shots for her."

Jane Crockett, a member of the Otero County Master Gardener Association, lives on five acres on U.S. Highway 82 in Alamogordo. Her yellow Labrador was bitten on three places last year "on the mouth, on the eyebrow and on the ear. He survived, but it was expensive," she said.

Crockett recounted another rattlesnake sighting, which may be the exception to the death-by-rattlesnake rule: "A young dog, a mixed breed, owned by Phil Westfall, a friend of ours, was bitten a month ago," Crockett said. "That was in Alamogordo Canyon on the south end of Scenic. Its head swelled up, and it hadn't been vaccinated but it survived without treatment, and it's doing OK."

Crockett had some suggestions. "Keep weeds down. Watch your step and carry a hoe," she said. "I've tried a (commercial) snake repellant, but it doesn't really work."
Snake bites rise as rains flush out rattlers

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