Did you know you can have your dogs vaccinated – a two series shot, renewed every year – against the effects of rattlesnake venom?  It’s designed to be most effective against the sidewinder which is mainly what slides around sideways in my neck of the dry landscape…or so I’m told.  Nothing seems to be effective against the Mojave Green so here’s hoping that bad boy never is anywhere me or Scouty.

This image borrowed from here: http://s3.hubimg.com/u/1676058_f520.jpg

So…what brought this all about?  I was allowing Scouty to drag me out on some desert treks every day in my area (usually twice a day) and after a month I saw her try to lick the carpal pad off of her left leg and her pads on the foot were part of the vigorous tongue scrubbing too.  I checked the carpal pad and small chunk was missing from it, raw meat left behind.  Damn!  We took a short walk the next day while I called for an appointment with a vet.  I not only wanted to establish a vet for her care, I wanted her feet checked.

We went the next day.  What an experience.  Keep in mind that my girl is extremely high energy, very aggressive towards some other dogs, and is keen on knowing what is going on at every moment…weighing in at 69 1/2 pounds, she can be a handful when we are navigating into dog/cat zones and lots of other people that smell like animals…the four legged kind, catch up please.

That’s where I found out about the rattlesnake vaccine for dogs.  They didn’t have a brochure handy but they wrote down website info for me and I decided to think about it first.  I found some interesting stuff.  Let’s share.  These are the main things to watch out for here in Southern Nevada. Searching the Internet took me to this – ughhh…poor snake bit dog.  The company that makes the vaccine is Red Rock Biologics.

It so happened that at our initial visit we were told there was a dog in the back that had just gotten hit in the face by a sidewinder out at Amargosa over the weekend.  Two dogs were bit.  One it didn’t bother as much, this one was right at the end of the vaccine, and her head was swollen up like a basketball.  No, I didn’t go look at her.  She was ready to go home after being there for three days.

Dr. Suzanne asked me if I hiked with Scouty leashed.  Always.  The two dogs that got hit were running loose and had ran underneath some boards in a fort that some boys had built.  BOOM!

So we made another appointment and went back yesterday afternoon where Scouty got her first rattlesnake shot. She’s cute, she tries to hide her head behind my leg when she doesn’t want to do something or want to be somewhere.  She took it like a trooper.  She had all of her other shots before I got her.  Problem with the vaccine is it takes about 3-4 weeks to reach full protection. Can’t change that or the circumstances since I got her a month ago. She seemed to have absolutely no reaction to the shot.

I was talking to the Monkey last night – he’s on his way to Vegas for a golfing venture with friends.  All I can say is watch out Vegas.  We were talking about rattlesnake vaccines/dogs – mine/and two hours worth of other things.  He asked me how many snakes I’d seen.  I told him I’d only seen one up in Calico Basin some years ago…but I didn’t run around sticking my nose under bushes.

Dogs can’t seem to keep their noses out of anything.  We have some bushes that grow low to the ground and one can tell they are the home of small critters, like the ground chipmunks, or mice, or something a snake would love to have for dinner.

On vaccinations, I went into Walgreens a week ago today and got a Shingles vaccination – yes I had chicken pox when I was a kid.  It was horribly expensive but I’d made up my mind I’d be ready to stick my nose under a bush and get bit if I ended up with Shingles and I could have kept that from happening.  For just about 20 minutes after the shot I had a weird kinda feeling…but I have those off and on every day of my life so who knows if it was caused by the shot?  Other than that, absolutely no reaction…woot!  I’m glad to have it out of the way.

My dog is one awesome critter.  Can’t imagine anyone ever giving her up unless they died.  Even holding her back from running down another dog or a rabbit where she’s choking out on the choke chain is worth it.  She loves to ride in the truck…she’s done a few ‘protective’ mode things that weren’t necessary and no one was injured but it was cool to know she would behave that way if she felt we were threatened.

Summer’s coming but the wind is still being a be-yatch.  I haven’t had the energy to even play internet poker the last 10 days or so.  I’m going to play a $1 buy-in try to snag a seat to the main event of the WSOP at Full Tilt…I’m even registered in 4 tables of the multi-entry tournament.  I sure as hell wish they’d take Patrik Antonius off the sign-in page.  He looks like a dork standing there with his hands shoved into his pocket – and he’s way better looking than that picture shows. Back to the tourney, it runs on April 3rd at 10:30, it’s a turbo with a $1+$.10 buy-in, guaranteeing three $12K packages. So far 21407 players are registered.  I should be out, in like 5 minutes, on all 4 but what the hey?

PokerWorks has a great satellite series running right now with Bodog Poker…check it out!