How To Treat Dog Insect Bites

Video Transcript

" Hi I'm Dr. Adrienne Mulligan of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic in Arizona and I'm here today to talk to you about insects bites and what you could do at home on behalf of expertvillage.com. Insects bites and scorpions stings and spider bites and fly bites and things like that all happens on a daily bases and your pet would not necessarily have a problem with most of these. Unless they have a allergy to them many of these insects are not as toxic as people think they are. Black widow spiders probably not as bad in a dog as most people fear although if they get enough of a bite in a small enough dog it could cause some neurologic problems so this are things that may need to see a vet as quickly as possible. The most common effect in a insect bite is going to be a swallowing, a swelling of a paw, redness of a skin, or it could be the face or anywhere that the dog has got bitten by the insect. You might see hives all over the body. Hives just like in people they are little bumps on they would raise the hair so you would notice these little bumps all over your dog with hair raised. Redness along the ears and the eyes and swelling of the face. These are things that usually happen from a bug bite or a bee sting something that a dog is allergic to. So there are some things that you could do to help. Number one is very safe to give a dog your basic benadryl. Diphenhydramine is the generic name for it and you could get either one at your drug store. You usually give this at a milligram per pound. So if your dog ways 50 pounds he could have 50 milligrams. These come in 25 milligrams tablets. If you have a little dog that ways 10 pounds you might want to get the liquid for children the plain benadryl and follow the direction on how many milligrams as in a teaspoon so you won't overdose them. Basically it is one milligrams per pound orally. Then you could apply ice or ice packs things that you keep in the freezer for muscle injures and you could wrap them with a towel. You could use baking soda if you see the wound to draw out in venom like a bee sting. The most important part is to get that benadryl into to them. Call your veterinarian. Get to the veterinarian and get them treated with some other medications that they would be using. Also if you can try to find insect or identify what actually bit the dog because it could help. Lets say it was brown recluse that is a much more series spider bite and would require a different care. Of course if it was a rattle snake that is a whole different story for a different day and that needs immediate veterinarian attention."