Spiders Are Evil

But I knew that already.

Poor Jethro. The night before he turned just 9 weeks old, I noticed the right side of his little muzzle was swelling a bit. At first, I thought maybe he and Truman had just played a bit too rough and he caught a big-dog tooth to the snout.

But Jethro didn’t want to play or snuggle or do anything else, instead opting to stagger over to his kennel to put himself to bed at 7 o’clock, which was unusual. The swelling on his nose got a little worse, and he started to look like he’d been in a puppy bar fight (if you know of a puppy bar somewhere, by the way, I beg you to take me there), so I called the GDA after hours emergency number. These things never happen during normal business hours, after all. That would be too convenient.

Between me and the person who answered, we figured it was probably a spider bite. They’re apparently happening in crazy numbers this year; the school has even had to have extra spraying around the grounds, and a lot of dogs in the program have come in to the vet department having suffered similar incidents. I am NOT a fan of spiders. This happened to Lomax once, and it scared the daylights out of me because by the time I could get him up to the school for treatment, his eyes had swollen shut and his head looked like a pit bull’s. The question was, can you give a not-quite-9-week-old puppy Benadryl, the way you can with older dogs? The vet tech gave permission, so off I went to the drug store for some Children’s Benadryl. Fortunately, wee Jethro slurped it right up and went to sleep.

The next morning, Wolf and I drove him to GDA for an exam. Poor pup had a yeast infection in both ears as well! His little immune system was working overtime. He got a shot of Benadryl, a gentle ear cleaning and some ear meds…but unfortunately, no 9-week vaccine (which would have just been too much all at once, considering he weighed in at just under 14 pounds). He was a champ at the vet department, though, charming the techs and being generous with sloppy puppy kisses despite the ordeal. And it didn’t hurt that he got cookies afterward.

I think he’ll be okay.