The American Beagler Forum

I came home to hunt and went to load the dogs and I noticed that my best dog's face was swollen like he had been bitten by a snake on both sides of his face. The last time we went out was Sat. I took him to the vet and she said it could be many things and gave me antibiotics. Anybody ever seen this. The dog is 8 yrs. old

yep...my dog had gotten pricked by one of the plants in our field...i forget the name of the plant but it is one myself and kids had gotten pricked by before as well and the immediate area around the prick got very hot and swollen... my dogs face was pretty swollen for a while...i figure she was nipping at it as she does anything that moves with the breeze... we didn't do anything...in a couple of days it went down...

addition: if it were a snake you would surely see the bite marks or some dried blood on the dog's coat...not to mention your vet should have been able to determine this if it was a snake

We had it happen once in our backyard...dog went outside, and came in 5 minutes later with his head extremely swollen. In addition, the dog soon got a lot of hives all over his body. Benedryl brought it all down, but it still tried to come back for a few days. We never had it happen again and don't know if it was an allergic reaction to some kind of plant or maybe an insect bite or something.

Just to follow-up on this...my wife brought home a dog just last week that was snake-bitten. The local animal control had no idea what was wrong with him and was going to put him down, but my wife found the bite. Even though he was bitten on the leg and not on the face, his head was grotesquely swollen. Apparently, it has something to do with the lymph nodes being located near the throat. His head was just a fluid-filled sac. After a few days of steroids, it quickly shrunk back to normal.