Health & Medical

If your dog trotted in from the garden this afternoon with a muzzle swollen to twice its normal size, would you know whether to reach for the car keys or sit down and watch him for an hour? Most owners genuinely do not, and the honest answer depends on a handful of signs that take about ten seconds to check once you know what they are.

Stings are the common one. Dogs snap at bees and wasps, so the sting usually lands on the nose, lips, tongue or a front paw. A bee leaves its sting behind, and you want to scrape it out sideways with a fingernail or a card rather than pinching it, which squeezes the last of the venom in. Wasps keep theirs and can sting repeatedly, which is why disturbing a nest is so much worse than one unlucky mouthful. A single sting normally causes local pain and swelling that looks alarming, especially on a face, and then subsides over several hours. A cool compress and a quiet afternoon is often the whole treatment.

The distinction that matters is between local swelling and a true anaphylactic reaction, and the clock is the best clue. Anaphylaxis usually announces itself within minutes to half an hour, not later in the evening. In dogs it tends not to look like the airway emergency people picture from human medicine. Far more often it starts in the gut: sudden vomiting, sudden diarrhoea sometimes with blood, a dog who becomes weak, wobbly or collapses, gums that go pale or white, cold extremities, rapid breathing, or hives erupting across the whole body. Any one of those after a sting means driving to the vet immediately and phoning on the way so they are ready. Do not wait to see whether it improves.

Also go regardless of how the dog looks if the sting is inside the mouth or the throat, if there were multiple stings, or if a swarm was involved. Airway swelling in those locations is worth pre-empting rather than watching.

The antihistamine question comes up constantly and needs a firm answer: phone your practice before you give anything. There are two real hazards. The first is the product. Plenty of human allergy and cold tablets contain decongestants, paracetamol or other additives that are toxic to dogs, and picking the wrong box off the shelf can turn a sting into a poisoning case. The second is the amount, which is worked out by weight and is not the human dose scaled by eye. Your vet or an out-of-hours nurse will tell you in under a minute which product and how much, and that call costs nothing. One more thing worth knowing: antihistamines do not treat anaphylaxis. If the dog is collapsing, a tablet is not the answer, the car is.

Snake bite changes the rules entirely, and the single most important instruction is counterintuitive. Carry the dog. Do not walk him back to the car, however far away it is, and do not encourage him to trot to you. Muscle movement pushes venom around the body faster, so the aim is to keep him as still and as calm as possible while somebody else brings the vehicle closer or you carry him yourself. In the UK the adder is the only native venomous snake, and bites cluster in spring and summer on heathland, dunes, moorland and woodland edges. Elsewhere the local species will differ, and it is worth knowing what lives where you walk.

A bitten dog typically has two puncture marks, usually on the face or a front leg, with rapid painful swelling that spreads, bruising, drooling, lameness, and in worse cases pale gums, wobbliness or collapse. Call the practice while you travel, because not every clinic stocks antivenom and they may need to source it or send you elsewhere. Do not apply a tourniquet, do not cut the wound, do not attempt to suck out venom, do not apply ice, and do not give any human painkiller. Most dogs recover well with prompt supportive care, and the ones who do badly are usually the ones who were kept moving or arrived late.

Toads are the seasonal one people forget. A dog who mouths a toad gets an unpleasant secretion across the tongue and gums, and the result is furious drooling, foaming, pawing at the mouth and bright red gums. Rinse the mouth with running water for several minutes, angling the head down and the water outwards so nothing is swallowed, then ring the vet. Common European and British toads usually cause misery rather than danger. Cane toads and Colorado River toads are in another category altogether, capable of causing seizures and dangerous heart rhythms, and those cases are true emergencies.

Processionary caterpillars deserve a mention for anyone in Mediterranean countries, particularly between late winter and spring. Their hairs cause a severe inflammatory reaction on contact, and a dog who licks or bites one can end up with a grossly swollen, painful tongue that in bad cases loses tissue permanently. Rinse the mouth immediately and go straight to an emergency vet. If you see a nose-to-tail line of them crossing a path, turn around.

Spiders and scorpions are largely a regional footnote. Most bites amount to a sore, swollen spot that resolves, with genuine exceptions in areas home to widow spiders, recluse spiders or medically significant scorpions. If you know what species are local to you, that knowledge is enough; do not go hunting the culprit for identification and get bitten yourself.

Two things to do today, before any of this happens. Have a look at your dog's gums while he is well, so you know what normal pink looks like on him and would spot pale instantly. And save your practice's out-of-hours number somewhere you can find it one-handed in the dark.