Melissa Butt was watching her children and two dogs, Paco and Slayer, play in the back yard when the dogs started showing strange behavior. The Pitbull mixes were staring at something in the grass and then within moments, went into full attack mode.
Melissa watched on worried for her kids safety, but once the dogs calmed down she soon realized that the dogs had just saved her children’s lives. The dogs had rescued her kids from a venomous snake native to the southern United States – the deadly copperhead.
The snake was dead, but the dogs were hurt. Slayer’s face had started to swell and that’s when she knew he had been bitten by the copperhead. Melissa rushed the dog to the vet and found out that he had been bitten twice. Paco was bit, but he did not get a large dose of venom.
The veterinarians at Blue Pearl Animal Hospital rushed to stabilize Slayer when it became clear he received the largest dose of venom. They started flushing his system with saline and antivenom and kept him overnight.
