Post Edited February 16, 2026
In this recently taken photograph (January, 2016) of my Australian Kelpie dog, Kelpy, there is a discernable scar running almost five inches from a point just below the left eye down to just underneath her left lower jawline. This scar of hers, something I can’t help myself from seeing everyday, is a constant reminder of her life and death struggle from a single, full-on rattlesnake envenomation and of the innate toughness of our beloved canines relative to us, mere human beings, as their compassionate caregivers and forever faithful companions. She took the hit delivered by a five-and-a-half-foot Western diamondback on Christmas night, 2016. I recall the event as if it were yesterday. I was in our upstairs loft quietly playing acoustic guitar with Kelpy lying at my feet. It had been a chilly, rain-filled Christmas day here in Central Texas. I’d spent the entire day at home alone with the company of our two dogs. My wife, Genie, had been visiting her relatives at the family farm in Cibolo, roughly an hour’s drive from our place. We have a beautiful house and a couple of outbuildings on some property seven miles west of the small town of Lockhart. Genie had gotten home earlier that evening and we enjoyed a late Christmas dinner. Afterward, she’d gone into our main living area to watch some TV while I retired to our upstairs loft to play guitar. The rain had let up perhaps fifteen minutes before the big event and I remember checking my phone for the temperature outside, which was 58 degrees and the time was 8:30 PM. A moment later I heard Sage, our wonderful Chow-mix, barking outside in the kennel which is connected to the back room of our house by way of dog-door. Sage is an extremely proficient watch dog and has a vocabulary of various growls, woofs, and barks ranging from a mild, low growl to a full-on, high pitched, three alarm bark! She continued on for perhaps five seconds before Kelpy rose from the bed, sailed down the steep wooden staircase…just about leaving sparks in her wake. At a full run I could hear her fly through the dog door as if it had all been done in one grand motion. It wasn’t five seconds later that I heard a shrill and troubled yelp and Kelpy reappeared in the house, frantic. She’s a rough and tumble alpha female if there ever was one, chock full of outdoor life experience at her then age of ten years. I’d never heard her in her life yelp in pain, nary even a slight whimper. I looked her over closely as two streams of blood had begun to pool just below her left eye. Like tears of blood, the crimson colored fluid began to trickle down the left side of her face and, on closer inspection, I could see two tell-tale puncture wounds a good inch and a half apart. Sage was still out in the kennel barking furiously when I ran out into the night after quickly flipping on the back porch light. Standing her ground just eight feet to my right, Sage was trying hard to point out the threat. But it was dark and the porch light left a surreal presence in the muffled fog as I looked and I listened for what was by now just a faint rattling in the leaves. It was cold and I’m certain the snake was by now tired and feeling every bit of the chill. Naturally, I was being cautious as all get-out but there had been no time to don my snake boots so I was tip-toeing around in an old pair of Merrell clogs and shorts. Aha! I spotted the snake, a big one for this locale and opened-up on it with my 9mm Ruger. After shooting the snake full of holes and removing its head with a five-foot garden hoe we keep on hand for precisely such duty, I finally had the chance to check Sage over. I turned again to make absolutely certain the snake wasn’t going anywhere without its head as I brought Sage inside to both better inspect her in the light and settle her. She was frothing at the mouth, lathered from the effects of adrenaline and salivary glands gone postal, but I found nothing…not even a scratch. In all that excitement she’d managed to keep both her head and her distance. It dawned on me that by the time Kelpy showed up the snake would have been completely riled. I feared that this was far more dire than a partial envenomation or dry bite warning snakes sometimes give.
By now, we, all the four of us, were inside with the headless snake left outside to be cleaned up later. Genie was on the phone with our vet who lives several towns distant and turned out to be unavailable. It was Christmas night, after all. After listening to his voicemail message we decided to call our secondary vet, a larger operation just eight miles away and in town. Amazingly, a live person picked up the phone and said they had one particular vet who’d been placed on on-call status for the holiday weekend. The answering service gave us the name and cell number of the vet and Genie immediately dialed her up. We were in luck and, while knowingly interrupting her own Christmas dinner, we were consumed by feelings of good fortune. A vet on Christmas night! Someone was smiling down upon us from on high. The vet, new to the clinic but a Baylor Veterinary School grad, met us thirty minutes later at the main clinic in Lockhart. Keeping Kelpy calm and as motionless as possible was easy…she knew full well where we were going and that papa was now in charge. Having spent ten years with this wonderful dog, she and I had crafted a way to communicate through body language, gentle and firm commands and, from early on, the uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking and going to do before doing it. Genie drove while I sat in the back seat of our SUV smoothing-over Kelpy’s coat and using gentle words in a soothing tone. Keeping her calm would help save her life.
We arrived just a few moments after our dedicated vet, each of us knowing it was going to be a long night. Amazingly, (because of the cold weather) there were two other dogs being treated for snake bite who’d arrived just an hour before we rolled-in. I carried Kelpy to the emergency room area of the clinic and walked along with the vet providing her with every relevant detail. From the moment of envenomation, just forty-five minutes had elapsed. We were darned lucky and we knew it. After I got Kelpy settled the vet and an assistant took over while I watched them go to work. While new to this clinic, our vet was moving deftly as if she and her assistant had been partnered-up for years. Once transfer of care had taken place I was told to corral my wife and head home for the night. The clinic doesn’t carry insurance for people in the emergency room on-site, only their beloved pets. I understood the rule but it would be the most difficult goodbye of my lifetime. They were doing all they could and viscerally I knew my dog was in good hands, but mentally I just didn’t want to leave knowing my dog might not make it through the night. Then logic began to take hold. It was now hovering around 11 PM and Genie and I, and Sage, could do no more for our sweet Kelpy. She was in the hands of professionals and what little time I did spend at the clinic that night, that fact had become abundantly clear.
Sleep came slowly but we were, the three of us, exhausted and I eventually drifted off. The vet had indicated that she’d be there all night by Kelpy’s side, administering antivenin, IV saline, and horse plasma. Over the millennia, horses have developed a tolerance for rattlesnake venom, so plasma taken from the blood of a donor horse has within it certain antibodies to quell the damage the venom would otherwise do. This is Texas and this clinic had been weened on snakebites.
The next morning came quickly and I drove up and ran into the clinic at precisely 6:30 AM. I sat and waited for what seemed a lifetime but in reality was less than twenty minutes at which time I was called back into the ER to see my dog. I was astonished at the size of her head and the open, gaping, and draining wound around her neck a full seven inches from the bite zone. The vet said that she’d taken a really potent bite but that the worst was over. Kelpy had made it through the hellish night. We talked and I conceded to leave Kelpy there for two more days and nights of round the clock care. The vet believed if we did so, if we gave her the best of care for a couple of days she’d pull through. The vet then allowed me to walk Kelpy outside in the neighboring grassy area to “go to the bathroom”. My poor dog. My heart sunk as I watched her once bright but now lackluster eyes meet mine. I could only hope. Hope was all I had. I took pictures of the gruesome sight which, to this day only a few others have seen, but I’ve never had the heart to show to my wife. Brutally grotesque. Though different, her bond with Kelpy is as strong as my own and they can be inseparable at times.
On day four I awoke early…somewhere close to 4:30 in the morning. I was anxious to see my dog for today was the day the vet had anticipated her release and I’d be taking her home. Again, I arrived at 6:30 AM and by 8 AM Kelpy had been discharged into my care once more. This tough, wonderful, creation of a dog had pulled through. I never doubted her…not for a minute. I put her on her favorite blanket in the passenger seat of my truck and we headed home for a joyous reunion. I’d cleaned up the snake’s remains before I’d gone to get Kelpy and tossed them in a cow pasture to be eaten by vultures just up the road a half mile from our home (the mess was gone by the following day). I pulled into the driveway, letting Genie and Sage out at the gate and Kelpy and I drove in. I helped Kelpy out of the truck and within seconds she ran through the house and out the dog door headed straight to where the nastiness had gone down. She sniffed around at the remaining blood spots and with Sage yielding her alpha sister a wide berth, Kelpy turned and as if nothing had happened and casually marked the spot. You’d have to know our beloved alpha female, Kelpy, to understand the significance of that mark. It meant that whatever happened during those four days after Christmas of 2016, not once did she forget who she was! And aside from the yelp when taking the bite, I never heard her whimper. She is thirteen now and is as tough, dominant, and willful as ever.
Edit: After living her sixteen adventure-filled years, we were forced to have Kelpy put down. She’d been treated for some form of liver cancer over the previous couple of years and had taken well to the medication. She remained happy and healthy until we could finally see that she was in pain and made the decision to have her euthanized, right here in our home. Her ashes sit alongside those of Sage, who passed at fifteen years of age, just a year later. The two dogs had grown up together in Colorado and had forged a powerful bond that goes beyond words. We enjoyed hundreds of trail runs and many other adventures together.
