Kay Harrison figured there was some kind of trouble when her dog, Sammy, started barking and wouldn’t stop outside her place in Tonopah.
Harrison said she stepped out to see what was going on, and the dog jumped in front of her, blocking her from taking another step. Harrison said she heard a rattle and leaned to see a rattlesnake in a flower bed by the door.
“She saved my life,” Harrison said of her 8-year-old Catahoula. “She got between me and the snake.”
Warmer weather means venomous snakes and other poisonous creatures are getting more active after winter hibernation.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department says people need to be more vigilant.
“You just need to watch where you put your hands and feet,” said Thomas R. Jones, the agency’s amphibians and reptiles program manager.
The snake bit Sammy on the head. Harrison thinks it happened when she turned to yell for help. The dog immediately got lethargic and suffered acute pain. Harrison could hardly get her into a Jeep for the trip to the veterinarian.
Swelling eventually closed one of her eyes, but Sammy made it. The dog goes home today after about five days in a Buckeye veterinary clinic.
Wally Wass, a veterinarian who works part-time in the clinic, said the dog probably would not have survived without the snake-bite vaccine he got last summer.