Five-year-old
"Boone," a Siberian Husky mix, got between a 14-year-old and a
rattlesnake and was bitten on the snout in the process. He's expected to
recover after the venom caused him to lose a large chunk of flesh.
Daniel Whitman
never heard the rattle but his dog Boone must have seen something because he
came running over anyway.
The 14-year-old
Whitman was supposed to be cleaning up after Boone in the backyard of their
home on Norumbega Drive last week. He was walking over to the corner where
Boone likes to do his business when the dog rushed over.
"Daniel
was headed in that direction and that's when I think Boone had noticed
something different and darted over there and got between the two of
them," said Dan Whitman, the teen's father.
That's when the
younger Whitman saw the rattlesnake, and he shouted to his dad and ran inside.
The dog soon followed, and he stayed with Daniel for some time afterward.
"He just
stuck by Daniel's side," Dan Sr. said. "He followed Daniel all around
the house. He did not leave his side."
What the family
didn't know was that before Boone came back in the house, he had been bitten.
They soon found out, however. Nothing was visible, but the 5-year-old Siberian
Husky mix started behaving strangely about 20 minutes later.
"There
didn't appear to be anything physically wrong with him," Whitman said.
"He started to kind of twist his head funny and look up at the ceiling
like he was in pain."
Whitman knew
something was wrong. A retired Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy, he also
knew that they didn't have much time to save Boone.
So Whitman
called 911 and let the police know they had a rattlesnake in the backyard. Then
he called Family Dog and Cat Hospital on Lime Avenue and was was eventually directed to the only local
place that carries anti-venom and is open after-hours, a veterinary clinic in
El Monte.
"I ran him
down there real quick. Got him there within 40 minutes of the bite,"
Whitman said.
The anti-venom
saved Boone's life, but he still sustained serious injuries. Rattlesnake venom
is an anti-coagulant and it causes tissue destruction, according to David
Garcia, a registered veterinary technician who has since treated Boone.
The venom
killed the tissue on Boone's snout where he was bitten, and the flesh there
started falling off in chunks, Whitman said. The wound has "just
progessively gotten larger," he said.
And the dog's
face also swelled up severely the morning after the bite.
"In the
morning his face had gotten the size of a canteloupe," Whitman said.
Garcia said
Boone is expected to recover, but not before the Whitmans had to shell out $500
for rattlesnake anti-venom. The dog could have been saved a lot of pain and
suffering if he was vaccinated against rattlesnake venom.
Garcia
recommended that every dog owner living above Hillcrest Boulevard get the
vaccine after seeing four other cases of dogs with rattlesnake bites over the
last month. With the vaccine, a dog's bite survival rate increases, though it
would still need to be treated with anti-venom, Garcia said.
Whitman said he
was going to make it his mission to raise the awareness of the need for pet
owners to get their dogs vaccinated. In the meantime, he's grateful for what
Boone did to protect his son.
"I'm sad
that Boone took the bite but I'm thankful my son didn't," he said.